


TRUE

by Dalet



Series: Grace's Last Reward [2]
Category: Supernatural, Zero Escape
Genre: Animated GIFs, Fanart, M/M, Music, Mystery, Screenshots, Visual Novel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-28 00:19:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 48,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15036530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dalet/pseuds/Dalet
Summary: 9 strangersawaken aboard a ship out to sea.9 hoursremain until the ship sinks into its depths.9 doorsstand between them and their survival.What is the[Nonary Game]? Why have they been gathered here? Who is the mastermind behind their ordeal, the person who calls themself[Zero]?And can it possibly be coincidence that Balthazar and Castiel have reunited here at last?If they wish to have their answers, then together they mustseek a way out.Seek a door that carries a 9.(SPNx999 visual novel)





	1. Third Class Cabin

**Author's Note:**

> *****FOR THE BEST READING EXPERIENCE*****
> 
> It is **highly recommended** to read this fic on **desktop** and in **widescreen.** Some sections will not look their best at other resolutions.
> 
> This fic is extremely **image heavy.** It is recommended to scroll instead of page down to avoid spoilers. 
> 
> ♫ are background music tracks. **CTRL/CMD + click** to open a in a new tab/window.
> 
>  **Content Warning:** There are images of blood and several violent deaths throughout the story, starting in Ch. 1. The deaths take place **offscreen** and are not described in detail, but may be considered disturbing.
> 
>  **Thank you for reading,** and hopefully my GIFs have finished loading by now. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *****WARNING*****
> 
> **THIS IS PART TWO**. Part one is [HERE.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15036260/chapters/34857911)

 

 

There was a thunderous noise.

Balthazar awoke with a start

           “OW _OW_ God _damn_ it--!”

and heard a _*CRACK*_ as his head collided with the low ceiling.

Falling back against the pillow, he wondered where the _hell_ he was that he deserved such a rude awakening.

Balthazar rolled over, and, in his still-fatigued clumsiness, tumbled off the top of what was, in fact, a three-level bunk bed.

_“Fuck_ me…”

No longer tired, at least, Balthazar shook his head, wiping away a few tears with his jacket sleeve as he groaned in pain. He tried to stand, but the room was shaking far too much; as his head cleared of fog, it was replaced by the oppressive sound of roaring air.

_An earthquake?!_

No, the tremors were too fast for any earthquake, but Balthazar didn’t know what else it could be. He threw an arm up against the bottom bunk to hold himself steady, waiting for the rumbling to end.

Even when it did, his brain was left feeling rattled. Trembling slightly, he pushed himself uneasily to his feet and began to examine the thoroughly uninviting room.

It was...stark, first and foremost, coloured mainly in the grey and beige tones of faded, peeling paint.

There was a second bunk bed opposite the one Balthazar had fallen off, but “bed” was a generous way to describe what was little more than piping and paper-thin mattresses.

To his left were a small, utilitarian table positioned just underneath a round, glass window, like the porthole of a ship,

and a closet nestled behind an antique stove, complete with rusty kettle.

To his right was little but an imposing metal door, roughly emblazoned, in red paint, with the number 5.

Balthazar stared at it.

There was a box attached to the wall next to it, something like an early 20th century card reader, as if such a thing even existed. The paint was just about the only colour in the room, and it looked fresh.

“What...?”

He stalked over and grabbed the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Balthazar threw his weight against first it, then the door itself, pounding several times.

“HEY! _HE--”_

His voice cut out when he noticed it.

“What the _hell...”_

On Balthazar’s left wrist was something that looked like a watch, mainly red in colour, with a large LCD display in the middle. Rather than the time, it showed only a single digit.

_Five? That’s the same as the door, but why? What is this?_

He flipped his wrist over as though to remove a simple watch, but the bracelet’s steel ring was solid all the way around.

With a grunt, Balthazar slammed his wrist against the door again, once, twice, three times…

Nothing.

He clicked the buttons on the sides.

Still nothing.

Once more he slammed his fist into the door, fury momentarily masking the pain. Balthazar rubbed his slightly achy wrist and snarled.

As he did, a low groan, like angry metal waking from a deep sleep, sounded from somewhere far away. It took Balthazar a moment to place the sound, then he frowned, taking another good look at his surroundings.

_Is this--_

__

_Is this a ship?_

He stalked over to the porthole and peered through. There was only deep, inky blackness, and Balthazar was about to hit the damn thing when he heard the first crackle. He pulled back, shaking his head in disbelief..

“Oh, you _must_ be joking-”

[♫](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CcjRNUU4yNlRfWDQ)

The porthole burst open, releasing a torrent of water into the room that hammered down onto the table, submerging the benches on either side as it washed over the floor, rapidly gaining on Balthazar’s ankles.

He _laughed,_ dry, bitter huffs of air. Then he tore across the room and pounded frantically on the door.

“HEY! Your fucking trap’s _broken!_ The whole place is fucking flooding! OPEN THE _GODDAMN DOOR!”_

Balthazar whirled around, leaning heavily against the door and panting as panic gripped his chest. Icy seawater lapped tauntingly at his shins.

Maybe…

           Maybe he had to _get_ out.

But... how?

There was a slim, blue briefcase laying neatly on a bottom bunk, he noticed suddenly.

He shook it desperately, and heard something like paper shuffle around inside, but the case was locked. Instinctively, he patted his pockets, to no avail. Nor did tossing around the bunk beds’ pillows reveal any keys.

To the right of the infernal porthole was a narrow closet. Balthazar threw it open to find another briefcase, this one red, but no keys.

“I’m twice as trapped now, aren’t I?” he snapped, turning frustratedly on his heel.

To the left of the door was a full-length mirror. Balthazar threw up the cover

and taped to its surface, he noticed gleefully, was a small, red key. He tore it off, squeezing it in a death grip. As he raised his head, he caught his own reflection.

           ...

                      ...right?

 

Balthazar hardly recognized himself; he looked ragged. His cheeks were pale and hollow, his gaze utterly worn out, deep bags hanging under his eyes. Judging by his appearance, he’d just come back from the dead.

 _What_ **_happened_ ** _to me…?_ he wondered, and as he did a hatch seemed to open in his mind, releasing a memory that he quickly snatched up.

 

* * *

 

_It was close to midnight as Balthazar unlocked the door to apartment 201, the plain, one-room affair he’d occupied since entering university a little over two years earlier. Balthazar flicked the lights on before he even tugged out his earbuds, and it wasn’t until he’d removed his scarf as well that he noticed something amiss._

__

_The breeze. Balthazar was entirely sure he hadn’t left the window open, and he hurried, tired and unthinking, to close it._

_He caught the other person’s reflection straightaway, and whirled around, his body seizing up in terror._

__

_Standing before him, in the middle of the room, was a person in a deep, hooded cloak of black canvas material, and a haunting gas mask that covered every last inch of their face. Balthazar summoned his courage and took a harsh step toward the intruder, but his legs collapsed under him and he slumped down against the wall, unable even to call for help._

_The masked intruder said nothing, and in the silence Balthazar finally noticed the hissing coming from his left. His vision already blurring, his mind rapidly numbing, Balthazar could only stare at the canister blasting white smoke into his apartment at an alarming rate._

__

_“Consider this a privilege.”_

_Balthazar barely registered the words, and the voice told him nothing; it was cold and electronic, distorted._

_“You have been chosen. You are going to participate in a game. The Nonary Game. It is a game…_

_… where you will put your life on the line.”_

 

* * *

 

Balthazar gaped at his own reflection. He felt nauseous, his stomach twisted like he’d just been punched. _A game. A God damned_ **_game_**. Was this it, the “Nonary Game”? Being left to drown?

He wanted to scream, or maybe cry, but the wet, biting cold against the backs of his knees said he had to move, _now._ Red key in hand, Balthazar turned and launched himself through the water, back towards the red suitcase.

It took three goes to get the tiny key into the tinier hole, but it clicked. Balthazar slammed it open and stared at the contents.

Three red cards, each with a single number boldly printed on the front: 1, 2, and 3.

_Cards…?_

_The card reader!_

__

__

He tore back across the room, almost dropping the cards in his haste to slide them through the reader.

He yanked the lever down, hoping to God for the best.

The card reader blared at him loudly, universal electronica for _“NO!”_ Balthazar turned and sloshed his way back towards the blue briefcase, intending to break the damn thing open.

Instead, he stomped past it and seized the kettle. Balthazar was learning fast; it was just the place to hide a little--

_\--key! Yes!_

__

__

The second briefcase did not disappoint. Balthazar shoved three more key cards - blue, numbered 6, 7, and 8 - into his pocket and flipped through the notebook laying atop them

__

It was mostly blank, like a journal, with a pen and calculator stuffed inside, but there was a brief note on the front page.

 

> [Digital Root]
> 
> To compute a digital root, first add the numbers in question to each other. If the result is greater than a single digit, repeat step one. The final single-digit number is the digital root.
> 
>            Ex. 678
> 
>            6 + 7 + 8 = 21
> 
>            2 + 1 = 3
> 
> Therefore, the digital root of 678 is 3.

 

“Then…” Balthazar half-staggered back to the door. He couldn’t run anymore; the water was too deep. “Do I need...a digital root of five?”

There was no 5 card, but…

1 + 6 + 7 = 14

1 + 4 = 5

He threw the lever

and the light switched instantly from “you’re going to drown” red to “taste of freedom” blue.

Balthazar shot out of the door, the force of the water sending him straight into the opposite wall. He pushed himself upright and quickly looked around the long, narrow hallway in which he stood.

One side seemed to go on forever, but the other ended, no more than 50 feet away, in a short flight of stairs topped with…

           ...another door!

Balthazar rushed towards it; it wasn’t locked. He leapt through the door, into the next room, and skidded to a wetly noisy halt.

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4Ca2VIVVFyalVqLU0)

The cavernous hall in which he found himself was a world apart from the cabin he’d just escaped. In the centre of the room, clearly connected to the decks above and below, was an ornate, gilded staircase of finely polished wood with gold, art nouveau embellishments.

He wondered, for a long, slack-jawed moment, if he was really on a ship after all, and then it clicked. Balthazar had _seen_ this room before...

           ...in photographs of the _Titanic._

 _No, this couldn’t possibly be…_ He thought, turning back to the hallway.

Perhaps not, but it was a dead accurate replica.

Fresh streams of seawater poured out of the cabin door, piling on top of each other as they rushed down the corridor.

Immense waves, almost reaching the ceiling, were headed straight for Balthazar’s delicate head.

His feet made loud, slapping _splacks_ as he tore across the room and up the stairs, taking them four at a time. He passed plaques for C Deck...

...and B Deck...

...and was halfway to the next one when he froze.

On the stairs above Balthazar, to his left, were four people; to his right, three more. All seven gaped at him, and he stared back, until one finally broke the spell and bounded down, pausing one step above him.

“Another one,” they seemed to sigh. They were young, around Balthazar’s age, and dressed in a way he liked to call “student chic”: a sharp, grey blazer over a deep navy vest and off-white collared dress shirt, slim blue jeans rolled up just above the ankle, and, Balthazar had to admit, much nicer hair than his own. Richly brown, it was lightly curled and stopped just below the **student** ’s shoulders.

The Student’s eyes flicked back up once at the other six people, and then they were off, down the stairs back towards B Deck. One by one, the others seemed to shake free of their momentary spell, and followed.

The second person to pass Balthazar looked just old enough to be the Student’s parent, or perhaps their **boss**. Another brunette, their hair was pulled back into a neat bun; if they’d been through anything like the ordeal Balthazar had just had, neither their hair nor their crisp, grey suit were any worse for wear.

“There’s no point going further up. The doors on A Deck are locked,” the Boss noted. “We’re checking B Deck now.” Their stiletto heels clicked on the steps as they hurried downward.

One-by-one, the others dashed past Balthazar to follow the Student and the Boss. Only one more paused in front of Balthazar on their way down. Well, two people, really, walking hand-in-hand.

The second of them, paused a couple steps further down, regarded Balthazar **sternly** , with some disdain, or perhaps suspicion. Like him, they were dressed to be out in November, a blue-grey, military-style coat with a white ruff over a neatly pressed pair of jeans.

“That’s all nine of us, then,” murmured the one closest to him, with a small smile. They wore a white sundress that reached just past their knees, and matching white slip-on shoes. Their blond hair, a little longer and darker than their companion’s, fell freely over their shoulders in soft waves. Balthazar wasn’t sure why, but their eyes were closed, giving them a serene appearance, like a sleeping **angel**.

The Stern one made a brief noise of assent at the Angel’s comment, and gently tugged them onward.

 _Nine?_ Balthazar was sure he’d counted right, and there were only eight people, himself included. Slowly, he descended the steps back into the wide hall. He hadn’t noticed in his upwards rush, but there were two enormous, metal doors set into the wall opposite the lavish staircase.

Sprawled on the surface of each door, in shockingly bright, red paint, were numbers:

Five...

...and four, respectively.

The Student had grabbed one of Door 5’s handles and was straining with all their might. An older person, broad-shouldered, bald, and much taller than the Student, tapped them gently on the shoulder, and they pulled together for several long moments, with no reward save the sounds of metal being strained. The larger one backed up several steps, and threw themself at the door,

 

_*BAM!*_

once, twice, three times, to no avail. Finally, they stood up, straightened their expensive-looking dark **suit** , complete with pocket handkerchief, and muttered something to the Student that Balthazar couldn’t hear. The Student kicked the door in frustration.

Next to them, the Boss was examining a rather fascinating point on the wall. Balthazar approached the three, and spotted the object of interest. Just beside the door, bolted to the wall, was a box very much like the card reader in the cabin back on D Deck.

There was no slot for a card, however, but rather a large, circular panel in the middle of the device, large enough to fit a hand. Nor was the bar at the top of the device blank, as the card reader’s had been, instead displaying the word “VACANT” in vivid green text.

Balthazar looked across the hall. Four people - Stern, the Angel, and two others - were examining Door 4 and a seemingly identical device next to it. Was every door in the ship bolted this way? Balthazar recalled the Boss’ words on the stairs, about the doors on A Deck, and turned back towards the staircase.

He hadn’t even taken a step up before he froze again.

There _was_ a ninth person, standing near the top of the stairs. About Balthazar’s age, they wore a long, fitted beige knit sweater, and a pair of purple-black leggings with faint, gold star designs.

Like Balthazar, they looked raggedly tired, their dark brown hair mussed as badly as his own.

But Balthazar hardly noticed any of that. He could only stare at the stranger’s face, as they did the same to him, tugging nervously at their dark blue shawl.

There was something hauntingly, achingly familiar about the young person on the stairs.

Slowly, he climbed the steps until they were face-to-face. The closer Balthazar got, the more he was so _certain_ he knew this person, from somewhere… He scrambled desperately inside his own brain for the answer.

“I’m sorry,” he started uncomfortably, “have we m--”

“...Balthazar?”

Balthazar’s eyes snapped open wide with surprise. The stranger, who had been regarding him closely, head tilted curiously, straightened up and smiled.

“It _is_ you,” they sighed with happiness. “It’s so good to see you.”

“Oh my God…” Balthazar murmured in shock. Yes, now he knew. He could _never_ forget that smile. “Cassie, it’s _you.”_

Castiel smiled brightly at him. Balthazar could hardly believe it; Castiel was his best friend, they’d been through all of elementary school together. But after sixth grade, Cass had moved away, and Balthazar had not heard from him since.

Until today.

Slowly, bitterly, Balthazar began to laugh, crossing his arms and shaking his head.

"You know, I've been praying _all_ these years I would see you again," he said. "This must be God _personally_ kicking my ass for the noise."

A soft smile tugged at Cass' lips, then quickly turned wry.

"Well," he shrugged, "you might be able to take it up with God before too long."

Balthazar stopped laughing.

"No, Cass, listen-" He took both of Cass' hands in his own and leaned in close. "You and me, we _will_ make it out of here alive, no matter  _what_ this is. I _promise."_

Cass hesitated, a hint of reproach in his eyes, but his smile slowly returned, and he nodded.

Balthazar smiled back. "Then we can take it up with God _together."_

"But..." Cass turned his head, looking off down the stairs. “What about everyone else?”

Balthazar chuckled, affectionately rueful.

“You haven’t changed one iota,” he chided. “It’s just like you to ruin the moment thinking of other people.”

Cass cocked his head, perhaps amused, or about to protest, when a deep, ominous rumble shook the ship, almost sending Balthazar down the staircase. Cass quickly caught his wrist, his free arm wound around the railing.

“Th-thanks-” Balthazar trembled slightly as he righted himself, and the two of them hurried down into the hall, where the other seven people had gathered together apprehensively. No sooner had Balthazar and Castiel caught up to them than the air filled with the hard crackle of radio static, and a cold, electronic voice filled the room.

_“Welcome aboard.”_

Several people, Balthazar included, shivered visibly. Frantically, they searched for the source of the noise.

It was a speaker, set in a corner of the ceiling.

_“I welcome you all from the bottom of my heart, to this, my vessel._

_“I am Zero, the captain of this ship.”_

There was something dreadfully familiar about the voice.

_“I am also the person who invited you here.”_

With an awful, twisting feeling in his stomach, Balthazar suddenly remembered it.

It was the figure in the gas mask, and he was clearly not the only person to make the connection. Others gave a start, murmuring to themselves in shock. Castiel stared intently at the speaker, arms crossed as he tugged at his sleeves.

“Why don’t you come out here?” Foolishly, Balthazar thought, the Student stepped forward, calling out to the “captain.” “I’d like to get a look at you.”

“What do you mean to do to us?” Another person spoke up. Alone of all nine people, their face was smoothly calm, and they carried themself with an easy, almost noble confidence. Like the Boss and the Suit, they were much older than Balthazar, their close-cropped, jet black hair lightly streaked with grey.

_“I mean to have you participate in a game. The Nonary Game._

_“It is a game where you will put your life on the line.”_

“That’s--!”

Balthazar wasn’t sure who shouted, but it was clear he wasn’t the only one who recognized that terrifying proposition. Zero continued.

_“The rules of the Nonary Game can be found upon your persons. They are simple rules._

_“Read them.”_

“Ah!” This time, Balthazar knew it was Cass who’d spoken. “There’s something in my pocket!”

His hand was deep inside his sweater, and he pulled out a folded, somewhat crumpled piece of paper.

The others, including Balthazar, followed suit. He’d thought his pockets had been emptied, and he didn’t seem to be the only one surprised.

“Would you mind reading them for us?” The same older person who’d spoken up asked Castiel. Given the situation, their implacable calm was both comforting and a little unnerving. Their stony face reminded Balthazar of a **statue**. “Just to be sure we all have the same information.”

Cass nodded, and began to read.

“‘On this ship, you will find doors emblazoned with numbers. We will call them the numbered doors. The doors in front of you are a pair of the same. The key to opening these doors are the numbered bracelets that each of you possess.’”

 _Numbered bracelet,_ Balthazar thought, had to mean the flashy object on his wrist.

“‘Should you total the numbers on your bracelets,’” Cass continued, “‘and find that the digital root is equal to the number of that door, the door will open. Only those who have opened the door may pass through.’

“‘There are, however, limits. Only 3 - 5 people can pass through one numbered door. All those who enter must leave, and all who enter must contribute.’

“‘The purpose of the game is simple. Leave this ship alive. It is hidden, but an exit can be found.’

“‘Seek a way out.’

“‘Seek a door that carries a 9.’”

Castiel wasn’t the only one who looked slightly shaken as he lowered the paper and carefully folded it, tucking it back into his sweater. A few people tried to speak up, but Zero had not quite finished.

_"There is one last thing I must tell you._

_“As you have no doubt surmised, this ship has begun to sink. On April 14th, 1912, the famous ocean liner_ Titanic _crashed into an iceberg. After remaining afloat for 2 hours and 40 minutes, it sank beneath the waters of the North Atlantic._  
  
_“I will give you more time._  
_  
_ _“Nine hours. That is the time you will be given to make your escape.”_

Undoubtedly on cue, a clock began to chime from far away.

No, not too far, they quickly noticed. The sound echoed out from an antique clock set in the middle of the central staircase. No one so much as breathed, desperate not to miscount the tolling.

7…

 

                                                       8…

 

9...

 

and not one more.

 _Nine o’clock, then,_ Balthazar nodded to himself. Given the darkness he’d seen through the porthole, it was no doubt nine o’clock at night.

_“Now, it is time. Let our game begin._

_“I wish you all the best of luck.”_

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CcUp3cWo4ek5tNzQ)

With that, the speaker went silent. For several long moments, the room remained the same way.

“I refuse,” the Boss spoke up suddenly. All heads turned to them. “I’m not going through those ‘numbered doors’. I refuse to jump when this _‘Zero’_ says so.” They waved their hand derisively towards the speaker.

“Where else is there to go?” Stern wasn’t the only one who seemed to disagree.

“Why don’t we find out?” asked the Statue. “We haven’t truly examined this place yet, after all. There might be some other way out of this cage.”

They parted hopefully…  

...but the faces that returned fifteen minutes later were downcast and worn.

_“Everything’s_ bolted down.” The Student crossed their arms in frustration. “Every window, most doors, even... _that.”_

They pointed upwards, at an enormous dome cut into the ceiling. Whatever it once had been, it was now filled in with the same metal that covered all the windows.

“We’re also stuck between the A and C Decks,” the Angel spoke next. “D Deck is completely submerged; however…”

Balthazar and Castiel had gone first to explore the lower decks with the Suit, Stern, and the Angel.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” the Angel had said, drawing their hand across the glassy surface of the water that reached halfway up the stairs to C Deck, “if Zero's somehow sealed a watertight hole in the hull.”

“So, without being _too_ optimistic,” the Statue mused after the Angel had reported their findings, “we can trust that Zero _is_ in control of when this ship sinks.”

The Angel nodded, and the Statue turned to back to the Student. “You said _most_ doors were bolted?”

“Those doors on A Deck are still _locked_ , but not bolted,” the Student explained. “The left one has a keyhole with... _something_ engraved on it. A circle with two lines inside, one across, one down.” They drew a vertical and a horizontal line in the air with their finger.

“That sounds like the Earth symbol.” Castiel spoke up. “It’s an astrological symbol. The horizontal line represents the equator, and the vertical one the prime meridian.”

He paused to take in the looks of confusion, then continued. “We found two of them on C Deck:

“the sun symbol on another keyhole,”

“and the Saturn symbol on a card reader by the elevators.”

There were a pair of elevators near the central staircase on C Deck. Balthazar had pressed the call button, not expecting much and thus not being surprised when the doors did not open.

“So the only doors we have…” Stern began cautiously, “are those?” They jerked their head towards the numbered doors.

“If no one’s hiding any keys, yes, that would seem to be our situation,” Balthazar answered.

“Regardless, I’m _still_ against going through,” the Boss spoke up again. “I refuse to play this so-called ‘game’.”

Balthazar couldn’t see any alternatives, but he understood why several of the others nodded in agreement. The ones left, however, protested.

“So what, we sit and wait?” the Student demanded of the Boss. The Suit spoke up more calmly.

“This _is_ a passenger liner. For something this big to be floating, or sinking, undisturbed means we’re pretty far out to sea. The chances of anyone finding us, breaking in, and getting us out in…” they glanced at the clock, “eight and a half hours is _very_ slim indeed.”

“Unless, of course, we’re actually in a secure government facility,” they added with a chuckle, “in which case, no one will _ever_ find us.”

Not a single other person seemed to share the joke. Some appeared to think it over, others simply looked terrified.

“Do you really think so?” the Student asked. “That this is some...government project?”

“Maybe a psychological experiment?” wondered the Angel.

“It does seem unlikely,” the Statue chimed in, “that one person would have the funds to put all this together. More likely, Zero is the representative of some organization...government or otherwise,” they added with an easy, yet bitter, smile.

“I certainly wasn’t going to suggest we stay here and do _nothing,”_ the Boss crossed their arms. “We should exchange information.”

“What kind of information?” asked Stern. Before the Boss could answer, the Suit “ah”ed knowingly.

“Right, you connect the dots between your victims,” they explained, “and that leads you to the culprit. Textbook deduction.”

“You two, for example,” the Boss, picking up their train of thought, gestured to Balthazar and Castiel. “You know each other?”

They shared a glance, Balthazar giving a small, nonchalant shrug.

“Yes, Balthazar and I were childhood friends,” Castiel replied, a hint of happy nostalgia in his voice.. “We...haven’t seen each other in years, but we went through grade school toge--”

“Now hold on,” the Suit interjected, calmly but with authority. _“Don’t_ start telling us things we didn’t ask you about.”

“You _did_ ask,” Cass protested. The Suit shook their head.

“Sure, there may be...some of us who know each other,” they swept their hand in the direction of Stern and the Angel, “but we can’t say for sure how much _Zero_ knows. If we give them enough information, they could go after our families, use them to force us to behave.”

“Oh…” Cass’ face fell momentarily, but he quickly looked back up, “--but, we have to exchange _some_ information. Names, for example. What will we call each other?”

“Why not pick code names?” the Suit answered, as though they’d already had the idea. “You could call me…” they thought it over for a moment, “Seven. And ‘he’, by the way.”

“Why ‘Seven’?” asked the Boss.

“Take a guess,” answered the Suit, or ‘Seven’ now, holding out his left arm. His numbered bracelet read, not surprisingly, 7.

“Good plan,” said the Student enthusiastically. “You can call me ‘Santa’, then. Any of you speak Japanese? Well, ‘san’ means ‘three’.”

They threw out their left arm, a 3 on the bracelet display. “So, ‘Santa’, like Santa Claus. And ‘she’.”

“If Santa chooses puns, I choose cards,” the Statue spoke up next, raising their arm, “My number is one, so I would appreciate if you would call me ‘Ace’, and ‘he’.”

“I choose anime,” said the Angel proudly, stretching out their arm. “My number is two, so you can call me ‘Duo’, and ‘she’.”

“Mine is four,” added Stern, smiling gently as they held out their arm,  “so I guess that makes me Quatre, and ‘she’.”

“Call me ‘Lotus’, and ‘she’.” The Boss raised their arm, showing off an 8. “The divine flower has eight petals.”

All eyes turned to Balthazar and Castiel.

“My number is five,” said Balthazar, showing off his bracelet. “You can call me--”

“‘Balthazar’,” the Boss, Lotus, interjected, then waved a hand at Balthazar’s frown. “We already know your name, is what I mean.”

“That’s my fault,” Cass looked stricken. “So I’ll give my name, too.”

“Why, because it’s not fair to your old friend?” Seven, the Suit’s, voice was gently teasing.

“It’s still a bad idea,” added Duo, the Angel, with nods of agreement from the others.

Castiel stubbornly squared his shoulders; Balthazar thought fast.

“What’s your number, darling?” he asked softly.

“...six.” Castiel pulled back the sleeve of his sweater to reveal his bracelet.

“Then why don’t we call you ‘June’?” Balthazar smiled, and Cass couldn’t help smiling back, murmuring the word fondly under his breath.

“The sixth month of the year,” Balthazar explained to the room at large. “And is ‘he’ still all right?”

“It’s fine,” Cass nodded.

Balthazar ran over the players one more time in his head.

[1] was Ace, the Statue.

 

[2] was Duo, the Angel.

 

[3] was Santa, the Student.

 

[4] was Quatre, the Stern one.

 

[5] was Balthazar’s own number.

 

[6] was Castiel, whom Balthazar had codenamed “June.”

 

[7] was Seven, the Suit.

 

[8] was Lotus, the Boss.

It took Balthazar - and the rest - a moment to realize, but that still left one person. He’d hardly noticed them, hanging back as they had by Door 4 with Duo, Quatre, and Ace. Nor had he heard them say a word since.

The ninth player blinked nervously at the sudden attention, their restless eyes sliding from person to person. Their greying, bird’s nest hair stood up all over, and they were clearly sweating under their moss brown, knitted cardigan.

Quatre, standing closest to them, leaned in slightly.

“You’re 9, right?” she asked.

“W-what do you think?” they snapped at her, although they did extend a rather shaky arm to prove their point.

Quatre was unamused. “Then what’s your code name?” she snapped back, arms crossed.

“I don’t n-need a--c-code name,” Number Nine stammered, albeit with a strange sort of confidence. Quatre raised an eyebrow.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not going to s-stay here...with the rest of y-you…”

There was something ever-so-slightly ominous in Number Nine’s tone, and Balthazar tensed himself. Seven and Lotus, at least, seemed to feel similarly.

“What’s your plan, then?” Quatre looked cautious.

Number Nine’s bloodshot eyes flicked over to rest on her. “You...s-sure you want to k-know?”

“Wha--” Quatre tensed, and tried to step back, but Number Nine moved like a snake.

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4Cckg0THVHTGJ0Tlk)

In an instant they had a fistful of Quatre’s hair in their hand and had wrenched her closer with surprising strength. Quatre shouted and grabbed Number Nine’s wrist--

           --then froze...as did the others.

Number Nine’s hand had been, for a split-second, in their pocket, and had come back out with a knife, which was now pressed to Quatre’s neck.

“Quatre--! Are you all right?!” Duo called out to her, stepping closer until she was stopped by Seven’s heavy hand on her shoulder.

“I’m-- _fine--”_ Quatre ground the words out between her teeth, glaring down at the knife.

“How is killing her going to get you out of here?” Seven asked, his voice rumbling out in a forced calm.

“I’m not _going_ to kill her,” Number Nine shot back. Any trace of nervosity had vanished from their face; in its place was a hint of a cruel, self-satisfied smile. “Not if she _and_ the rest of you do _exactly_ as I say.”

Glancing over their shoulder, Number Nine began slowly to move backwards, dragging Quatre with them. The others edged forward, at a snail’s pace out of caution. It quickly became clear that Number Nine was headed for Door 5.

No, Balthazar realized, not the door, the device _next_ to the door.

“Verify,” Number Nine spat out when they’d reached their destination.

“Do _what?"_ Quatre spat back again.

“Your left, look on your left,” Number Nine snapped. “You see the device? You see the scanner panel in the middle?”

Quatre nodded once, twice.

“Put your hand, your _left_ hand, on the panel, now!”

“The hell I will!”

“I don’t need _you_ , you know.” Number Nine insisted, their tone menacing enough to give Balthazar a chill. “I just need your bracelet.”

Quatre glanced over at Duo and seemed to consider obeying. For the first time, she, too, looked frightened. Slowly, Quatre stretched out her left arm and pressed her hand quickly, briefly, on the panel.

There was a single _*beep*,_ and an asterisk took the place of the “VACANT” text on the bar.

“Good! Good, now, _you!”_ Number Nine jerked their head at Ace. “Number 1, right? You next, verify!”

“All right, all right…” Ace raised both hands halfway as he walked, agonizingly slowly, towards the device.

A second asterisk appeared as he placed his palm on the scanner, and he backed away, just as slowly and placatingly, to the rest of the group.

“Thank God you’re all so cooperative,” Number Nine smiled as they slapped their own hand on the scanner and pulled the lever at its side, letting go of Quatre’s hair for no more than a split-second to do so.

The number 5 doors groaned open automatically, and Nine dragged Quatre in between them, her body between theirs and the others’.

“Let her go _now!”_ Santa shot at Number Nine, taking a harsh step forward, only to have Quatre thrown against her. The others barreled forward as soon as she was out of Number Nine’s grip, but it was too late; the doors swung shut.

“So long!” Number Nine called out, with a grin and a sarcastic wave of their hand. Balthazar grabbed one door handle, Seven the other, and they pulled with all their strength, but it was no use. It was as if the doors had never been opened.

“Look at this,” murmured Lotus, peering at the verification device, or what Number Nine, strangely knowledgeable, had called the “scanner panel.”

In place of “VACANT”, or of asterisks, the bar above the panel now read “ENGAGED” in dark red text. Curiously, Balthazar placed his own palm on the panel, but there was no reaction.

“Does anyone else hear that?” Duo, after helping Quatre to stand, stood with her head cocked towards the doors.

“Hear what?” asked Balthazar, obviously speaking for the others.

“That...beeping,” Duo answered slowly. “It’s coming from the other side.”

They gathered in close and pressed their ears to the doors. Sure enough, there was a steady, electronic beeping coming from somewhere within. A few seconds later, there was more.

                       _“Fuck! Oh, fuck, why isn’t it working?!”_

It was Number Nine’s voice. They were pounding on something as they shouted, sounding desperate. The others sprang back when Nine suddenly hammered on the inside of the doors.

                      “Please!! _Please!_ Help me! _Let me out!!”_

The beeping sound had drawn closer as well, as though it were attached to Number Nine themself.

Quatre, Balthazar, and Seven all scoffed at Nine’s plea, but Castiel hurried to press his palm to the scanner. Lotus followed, but still the screen remained unchanged.

“It’s not working!” Cass called through the doors.

                       _"Fuck!_ Oh no, oh God--listen to me! I was tricked! I was murdered! It was--”

_*BANG!*_

 

They all ducked on instinct, but soon realized there was no danger. In the silence, a single, cold _*beep*_ caught their attention.

The device by the door read “VACANT” once more.

“The beeping stopped,” Duo observed calmly. Quatre gave a small, derisive snort.

“Let’s open it,” Lotus ordered.

“Why?” asked Balthazar. “I think we can make an educated guess as to the result.”

“That’s _awful…”_ Castiel murmured.

“We don’t have a choice,” Seven pointed out. “If we want to move on, not everyone can go through Door 4. Those are the rules.”

“‘Only 3 - 5 people can pass through one numbered door’,” Santa intoned from memory. “So...is that why they died?”

“We don’t know that they’re dead!” Castiel insisted. He set his jaw. “Let’s...yes, let’s open it. We have to be sure.”

Seven shrugged amicably. Lotus nodded and pressed her palm to the device. Balthazar sighed, and approached the scanner as well. Two asterisks now occupied the bar.

“Mm… Ace, would you be so kind?” Balthazar asked after running a quick mental calculation.

1 + 5 + 8 = 14

1 + 4 = 5

Ace sighed as well, but offered up his hand. Balthazar pulled the lever, and the doors swung open once again.

There was blood everywhere, but the smell hit them hardest...at least until they caught sight of the body.

...or what was left of it.

“Oh...God,” Santa breathed from behind her hand. “They _blew up.”_

The others variously groaned or nodded, sighing with relief when the doors swung shut.

Balthazar turned quickly to Castiel, just in time to see him sway on his feet and begin to fall.

 _“June--!”_ As he, with Santa's help, lowered Castiel to the floor, it became clear that it was not the gruesome sight that had knocked him down.

“June, you’re _burning_ up,” Santa said, shocked.

Balthazar touched both Cass’ cheeks, and his forehead. He wasn’t just hot; he felt like he’d stepped out of an incinerator.

“Can you stand?” Balthazar whispered.

Castiel nodded weakly, and together Balthazar and Santa helped him to one of the chairs that lined the walls below the central staircase. Cass put his face in his hands, and Balthazar couldn’t tell if he was having trouble breathing, or crying.

“I can’t _believe_ you still want to go through with this!” Lotus shot at Seven. “After what just happened!”

Seven opened his mouth to answer, but Balthazar cut in first.

“Before we come to _that_ decision, there’s something _else_ we need to do.”

He paused as the others turned to him cautiously.

“I need to ask: do _any_ of you know _anything_ about this ‘Zero’? Or the Nonary Game? Any ideas _at all?”_

There was total silence...for a moment.

“I- I _saw_ Zero,” murmured Santa, staring at her feet.

“Sort of,” she clarified, looking up at the stunned faces. “Not their _face,_ I mean, when I was grabbed there was--”

“A person in a gas mask?!” Quatre cut in, eyes wide. Santa stared back at her.

“Yes! And white smoke, from some kind of gas grenade?”

Everybody nodded, and began to speak at once, a blur of noise.

Their stories quickly became clear: every one of them had been kidnapped from their homes, just after midnight, by a stranger in a mask who’d used a gas grenade to incapacitate them, telling them they’d been “chosen” to participate in a “game.”

They’d woken up on D Deck, in a third class cabin, and solved the puzzle of the numbered door to escape.

One story in particular caught Balthazar’s attention.

“You two were taken from _and_ woke up in the same room?” he asked Duo and Quatre, the only other pair with some apparent connection outside of the Nonary Game. “Why?”

“Because we live together,” Duo answered, sounding almost smug. “We’re sisters.” Quatre merely nodded.

“Sisters...and childhood friends,” Seven rubbed his chin and motioned at Balthazar and Castiel, who lifted his head to nod.

Balthazar laid a hand on Cass’ shoulder, meanwhile wracking his brain for answers. Had he ever met Duo and Quatre? Had they, perhaps, attended the same elementary school? Could Zero be a former classmate? A teacher? ...A disgruntled janitor, maybe?

The pensive silence was interrupted by the clock bell tolling.

8…

 

                                                       9…

10.

A whole hour had passed since Zero’s announcement. Only eight remained before they sunk.

“So what’s left?” Santa crossed her arms, looking them over. “You all know the answer. We _have_ to move on. We’ve lost a whole hour already.”

They all stared at the clock, as though begging it for just one more hour, _please._ Even Lotus, seeing the time spent, seemed reluctant to argue.

“How do we protect ourselves?” she asked nonetheless. “Can it really be as simple as ‘3 - 5 people in each door’?”

“Pretty much,” Duo chimed in.

“You seem refreshingly confident,” said Ace. “Care to enlighten us?”

“Certainly.”

Quatre reached into her pocket and pulled out what appeared to be a stiff sheet of paper, handing it to her sister. The others’ dove automatically into their own pockets, but it seemed they were at Duo’s mercy.

“What… why do you have that?” Balthazar couldn’t help himself.

“Because Zero is kinda patronizing,” she answered crisply, holding the card up.

“You see?”

The pun was rather on the nose; the double-sided card was written entirely in braille.

No one but Balthazar seemed surprised; information he’d missed being late to the party, apparently.

“Yes, I...see,” he answered, stifling a smile. Duo nodded and began to read, her fingers gliding smoothly over the words.

“‘Bracelet number 2, since you are not blessed with sight’,” Duo scoffed lightly, “‘I shall bless you - and only you - with information. I shall tell you of the function of the RED, of the DEAD, and of the bracelet.’

“‘The RED is the Recognition Device. It will verify your number. Beside every numbered door, you will find a RED.’

“‘The DEAD is the Deactivation Device. It does exactly what it says. Once you have passed through the numbered door, you must use the DEAD to stop the detonator in your bracelet.’  
  
“‘But perhaps you are wondering, what does this detonator detonate? I am afraid this may be something of a surprise.’  
  
“‘I have placed a small bomb inside of you, and the people whom you are about to meet. You swallowed it while you were unconscious. I have no doubt that by the time you read this note, the bomb will have passed your stomach and found its way to your small intestine. In other words, you will be unable to regurgitate it. I suggest you do not try.’  
  
“‘As I mentioned, the bracelet on your left hand contains a detonator. Think of it as a remote fuse, or timer, for the bomb in your body. There is only one condition which will cause it to detonate. That condition is that you enter a numbered door.’  
  
“‘Once you have done so, the timer will activate. You will have 81 seconds. If, after that time, the detonator has not been deactivated, it will send a signal to the bomb in your body, instructing it to explode. In order to deactivate the detonator, every person who verified their number at the RED must also verify their numbers at the DEAD.’

“‘Once all numbers have been verified by the DEAD, you need only pull the lever at its side, and the countdown will cease. Anyone who does not verify their number at the RED will find themselves unable to verify their number at the DEAD.’

“‘That is to say, if you should pass through a numbered door without first verifying your number at the RED, in 81 seconds you will be dead.’

“‘You must also keep in mind that the numbered doors will close automatically after 9 seconds have passed. So long as the door is open, the DEAD will not function.’

“‘Lastly, let us discuss how to remove the bracelets. There are only two ways to do so.’

“‘One: you escape from this ship.’

“‘Two: your heart rate reaches zero.’

“‘In other words, once the bracelet is taken outside the confines of the ship, or detects that its wearer's heartbeat has fallen to zero, it will shut down automatically. There is no other way to remove your bracelet. If you attempt to force it off, or disable the detonator, the bomb within you will immediately explode.’

“‘This is all the information which I can impart to you. How you choose to use it is for you to decide. If used wisely, you can eliminate those who might be a danger to you. For a time, you would be able to control your fate.’

“‘I wish you the best of luck.’”

With that, Quatre took the card back and tucked it into her coat.

“Then, Nine died...” Santa broke the silence, ”because they broke the rules?”

“So it would seem.” Duo tilted her head thoughtfully. The others variously stared at their wrists, or gingerly touched their fronts.

Balthazar’s stomach felt hollow; there was a _bomb_ inside him, and it would detonate at the mere whim of the ungainly _thing_ clamped over his wrist. It was judge, jury, and executioner.

“Fine!” Lotus snapped, her face pale but her tone definitive. “I give in. We’ll open the doors. But you realize we’ll have to split up. How do we decide? Is anyone even willing to go through Door 5?”

A single, deep sigh pierced the silence that followed; it was Seven. He rubbed the back of his bald head in slight irritation.

“I’ll go through Door 5, but I can’t go in alone. Anybody else?”

“I’ll go with you,” Duo offered, sounding fairly unperturbed. Of course, she would be immune to the sight of the body, but the _smell_ alone…

“Then I’m going as well,” Quatre added.

“That’s still not enough,” said Seven.

2 + 4 + 7 = 13

1 + 3 = 4

“We still need…” His eyes swept over the remaining players. “Ace?”

Ace merely shrugged. “And I only just bought these shoes. Very well, then.”

“It’s perfect,” said Lotus happily, gesturing to those left over. “We make a digital root of four.”

3 + 5 + 6 + 8 = 22

2 + 2 = 4

As the others nodded their agreement, Balthazar gave Cass’ shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“Ah, June?” the code name swirled uncomfortably in his mouth. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine, I’m all better…” Cass smiled as he stood. His voice was still soft, even weak, but when he looked at Balthazar, his eyes were clear. Balthazar pressed a hand to his forehead nonetheless.

“Yes, you’re...much cooler.” Perhaps it _was_ the shock of seeing the corpse, or what was left of it, that had spiked Cass’ temperature, but Balthazar couldn’t be sure.

“I’m relieved,” Lotus added, “and I don’t mean to be rude, but if you’re up to it, we should move on. Now.”

Cass nodded to her.

They started first towards Door 5, Ace, Duo, Quatre, and Seven in the lead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are only moderated to avoid future chapter spoilers. Any feedback is **hugely** appreciated! You can leave comments here or [**on my blog.**](https://everymeloveseveryyou.tumblr.com/ask)


	2. Door 4

One-by-one, the members of Team 5 pressed their palms to the RED. Ace threw the lever, and everyone tensed visibly as the doors swung open.

The smell alone nearly knocked Balthazar off his feet. He wasn’t surprised when even the resolute Seven hesitated at the threshold.

Duo and Quatre, however, marched on implacably, their shoes making soft, wet _squelch_ ing noises in the drying blood.

“Excuse me, are you trying to kill us?” Duo smirked over her shoulder. “You _know_ the door only stays open nine seconds.”

Seven cleared his throat and shared a quick nod with Ace, and they hurried through the door just in time. It closed with an ominous groan, and then…

“...it's beeping,” murmured Castiel.

All four of them held their breath as they pressed their ears to the door, listening to the muffled cries and the pounding of feet on the other side.

“It’s right here!” Seven shouted suddenly, very close by. Balthazar could hear the others frantically running back, all of their bracelets still ticking as they slammed their hands against the scanner.

Then...

            ...silence.

 

                      “Listen up!”

They jumped when Duo knocked on the door, calling out. “Don’t go too far looking for the DEAD, yeah? It’s probably nearby!”

“And it’s blue,” Quatre added.

“Thanks!” Santa called back. “That’s great!”

“Good luck,” said Cass.

They waited until Team 5’s footfalls faded away, then headed for Door 4, feeling steadier and reassured.

Calmly, they scanned their hands, and Balthazar swung the lever.

Castiel and Santa were first through the door, and as soon as it swung shut behind him, Balthazar knew something was wrong.

“Well, where is it?!” Santa shouted. The DEAD was nowhere to be seen in the long hallway dotted with doors.

“It wouldn’t be _inside_ one of those, would it?” Cass answered. Santa gaped at him.

“We’ve only _got_ 81 seconds!”

Balthazar glanced at his wrist.

A skull flashed on and off behind the number on his bracelet with every chilling beep.

“Start looking!” snapped Lotus, taking off down the hallway towards the nearest door and viciously shaking the knob. Cass and Santa grabbed their own, but none opened.

“Wait!” Balthazar pointed dead ahead, all the way to the end of the hall. “Down there, hurry!”

He bolted with the others in tow, skidding to a halt in front of a blessedly familiar, blue box.

Balthazar slammed his palm onto the scanner, motioning frantically as Cass, Santa, and Lotus followed suit, then threw the lever.

All four held their breath, even in the telling silence. Balthazar ventured another look at his wrist.

Castiel and Santa met his gaze as he looked up, nodding tightly. Lotus sighed, a little shakily, and started back up the hall.

“Where are you going?” Santa called after her.

“Where are _you_ going?” Lotus answered, looking pointedly past their heads. “The only way forward is through one of these.”

She gave the nearest door knob an unsuccessful shake and moved on to the next. Balthazar and the others turned around, although they could guess Lotus was right. An ornate, wooden double door blocked their path, and, naturally, it was locked.

Balthazar released the handle and shrugged just as Cass dropped to his knees to peer at the keyhole.

“Look-” he gestured to the others, “another astrological lock.”

“Mars, right?” said Santa, crouching next to Castiel. Even Balthazar recognized it.

“‘Mars’ what?” Lotus rejoined them. Balthazar motioned at the engraving.

“We seem to need a Mars-flavoured key to proceed,” he explained. Lotus tapped the door next to the DEAD and nodded at the one directly opposite.

“It must be through one of these two, then,” she said. “Every other door is locked.”

She paused thoughtfully.

“No, not locked,” she added. “I think the doors are barred from the other side.”

“Like the windows by the staircase?” Santa spoke up. “Well, that’s nice and obvious, then.”

She grabbed the handle of the door numbered B93, and Balthazar took B92. They glanced at each other over their shoulders, nodded, and turned the knobs.

Both doors slid open with a gentle creak. Balthazar craned his neck to peer inside before turning back to the others. Lotus had already disappeared into B93, and Santa merely shrugged at him.

“I guess we should split up,” she said simply. “Come over if you run out of clues.”

“Likewise,” Balthazar answered. Cass walked past him into B92, and Balthazar carefully shut the door behind them.

They found themselves in a small, cozy cabin. Left of the entrance was a closed door beside a black-and-white abstract picture, hung above a precariously balanced vase. Balthazar stepped through the door

but the bathroom was a dead end.

He turned right instead, into the living room. An invitingly soft-looking, marble blue sectional sofa abutted a wood-and-glass display case set into the corner just next to another single door.

The case was completely bare, as was the circular coffee table, save for, on closer inspection, a box of matches. Balthazar swiped it up and fell back onto the sofa with a satisfied huff.

Cass pulled his head out of the nearby door and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Not going to get to work?” he asked with an amused smirk.

“Not much to work _with,"_ Balthazar shrugged nonchalantly, gesturing around the room. He made to stand, only to fall back down when his legs wouldn’t support his weight.

The clear shock on his face alerted Cass, who walked around the table and took a seat next to Balthazar, laying a hand on his shoulder.

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CRm0yaTB0TlZ6ZlU)

“Are you all right?”

“Er…” More than a little embarrassed, Balthazar could hardly meet his eyes. “My legs seem to have given up.”

“Must be stress,” Cass answered straight away.

“You seem very sure,” Balthazar did manage to look up, hoping Castiel was as confident as he sounded.

“Well, _I_ almost fainted,” Cass went on matter-of-factly. “Under the circumstances, it’s only natural. I’m sure it’ll pass.”

“That’s right, you-- June, how are you?” Balthazar interjected, pulling himself upright anxiously. “Is your fever really gone?”

“You already asked me that,” Cass answered. “I think you’d notice if my fever came _back."_

He paused, a wry smile slowly spreading on his face.

“...w-what?” Balthazar felt a flush creeping up his cheeks.

_"You_ haven’t changed one iota either, Balthazar,” Cass announced proudly. “You’re still just a warrior.”

Balthazar blinked, his mouth slightly open. “I’m a... huh?”

Cass seemed confused, then suddenly blushed, clapping a hand over his mouth.

“Oops,” he murmured, smiling. “I meant ‘worrier’.”

Balthazar stared at him, then broke into a warm, easy laugh. “Well, I...”

He looked down at his knees, his smile fading. No, Cass was exactly right. Nine years earlier, his best friend had vanished off the face of the Earth, and Balthazar had done nothing _but_ worry since.

Now Cass was here, right in front of him, beside him,

but not safe. Not yet.

“I’m sorry...”

His head snapped up when Cass spoke, and his expression made it clear he had guessed Balthazar’s thoughts.

“I’ve wanted to see you all this time,” Castiel looked down, his voice soft. “I never meant to disappear like that, to scare you...like that...”

Balthazar laid a hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze, meeting Cass’ eyes when he looked up.

“If you didn’t mean it, then there’s _nothing_ to apologize for,” he said. “I know things were out of your control. I’m _really..._ really just happy to see you again, June.”

Cass nodded tightly, quickly wiping his eyes with his sleeve. Balthazar offered him a smile.

“I meant what I said earlier,” he insisted. “I’m going to make _sure_ we get out of here, and then...we’ll have all the time in the world together.”

“Yes...” Cass took a deep breath, then smiled back brightly. “You’re right. I can’t wait...”

He stood up, brushing off his sweater, and held out his arms to help Balthazar stand, leading him to the door he had been peeking through.

It was the bedroom.

Tucked into one corner, next to a small dresser, was a framed double bed sporting a duvet to match the sofa. The only other furniture was a bare vanity opposite the foot of the bed.

On instinct, Balthazar tugged open the dresser drawer. For a moment, his heart leapt at the discovery of a thick, gold key, but there was no Mars sign to be seen, and nothing else to be found.

“There’s fuck all in here either,” Balthazar grumbled, shuffling over to the bed and leaning heavily against it.

“That’s not true!” Cass answered quickly. “Look up there!”

He clambered onto the bed before Balthazar had even turned his head. On the wall above it was a large picture frame. Cass extracted the paper inside and lowered himself back down, holding it out for Balthazar to see.

“A map?”

“Yes,” Cass nodded, “of B Deck. This is us, right here-”

He pinpointed a single square, then drew his finger across the map, stopping on a larger room.

“-ah, the staircase,” noted Balthazar.

“Right,” Cass nodded again. “And these are the 2nd class cabins we’re in now.”

“Where’s the other team?” Balthazar asked. He could follow the path past Door 5, but couldn’t say what it meant.

“They must be in 1st class,” Cass answered, tapping the map.

“In other words, we chose the wrong door,” Balthazar chuckled, then gestured back at the Door 4 hallway. “What’s next, then? Where does the Mars door lead us?”

“Well, it _leads_ to these stairs down to C Deck,” Cass tilted his head, “but I can’t say where we’ll be _lead.”_

“That’s up to Zero, isn’t it?” Balthazar scoffed softly.

“And it assumes this really is a faithful replica,” Cass noted. “What if they scrambled other parts of the ship, just to mess with us?”

He paused.

“Well, mess with _me,_ at least,” he added with a touch of pride.

“Oh, I’ve _missed_ that,” Balthazar sighed affectionately. “You and the unsinkable special interest.”

“You know they never truly die,” Cass smirked.

“Now, don’t sell yourself short, darling,” Balthazar insisted. _"I_ can barely keep track of mine. There’s just so _much_ to be specially interested _in._ It's overwhelming, frankly. I envy your focus.”

Cass looked quite satisfied. “Well, there’s just so much about the _Titanic_ still waiting to be discovered. I _can’t_ quit now.”

“I do wonder why Zero would put an expert on the cage _in_ the cage,” Balthazar raised his eyebrows. “But good God, imagine putting _this-”_ he gestured widely around the room, “-together, imagine the _fortune_ spent, only to toss it all about like that!”

“And then sink it,” Cass shrugged wanly, then fell silent, pressing a finger to his chin as his eyes slid slowly across the floor.

“Oh dear…” Balthazar cooed at the look of faraway thought. “What is it?”

“Do you think…” Cass started, slowly looking up, “this could be the _real_ thing?”

“In a _The Ship That Never Sank_ sort of way, you mean?”

Castiel smiled brightly. “You’ve heard of it!”

“Mmm, yes, heard _of_ it,” Balthazar waved his hand airily, “Something something insurance scam, no?”

“The _Titanic_ had a sister ship called the _Olympic,”_ Cass began to explain. “But it was damaged at sea and the owners wanted to dispose of it, so they disguised _Olympic_ as _Titanic_ and sunk it deliberately intending to collect the insurance. ...or they would have, if it hadn’t hit the iceberg. That wasn’t intended.”

“And _Titanic?”_

“Became _Olympic_ and served as a passenger liner for over 20 years, until dismantled in 1935.”

A somber expression filled Castiel’s face as he finished the tale.

“So I suppose it doesn’t really matter which ship was the real _Titanic,”_ he added quietly. “Whether she sank or was retired, she no longer exists.”

Balthazar blinked uneasily at the sudden change of mood.

“Which do you think it was?” He managed a curious smile. “You _are_ the expert.”

Cass smiled back, then shook his head. “I’m sure it was the real _Titanic_ that was sunk.”

“Of course,” Balthazar nodded.

 

“...by the mummy’s curse.”

Halfway to the bedroom door, Balthazar turned back.

“Hang on, I _know_ that one,” he said, waving a finger. Cass smiled, cocking his head inquisitively.

“Do you believe it?” he asked.

“I’d say you’d know better than me if it sank the _Titanic,"_ Balthazar returned the playful look.

“Well, there really _was_ a mummy on board,” Castiel squared his shoulders intently, “and she was much more interesting than any curse.”

“Oh?”

“They called her a mummy, but her body was completely unembalmed,” Cass’ eyes brightened as he spoke. “She was perfectly preserved, like she was just sleeping.”

“How is that possible?” Balthazar shifted his weight, staring.

“You know how water makes up half or more of the human body?” Cass began to explain. “Apparently, all of the water in her body was frozen solid.”

“Then her tomb must have been like a freezer,” Balthazar offered. He was surprised when Castiel shook his head.

“I mean, maybe,” he said, “but the most incredible part is that she _never_ melted. Not when they took her across the desert, not on the ship… Even after they recovered her from the wreckage and brought her ashore, she stayed froz--”

Cass' eyes went wide, looking over Balthazar’s shoulder. Balthazar swung around, his blood cold.

Santa half-shrugged apologetically, her hand raised to knock at the door. Balthazar groaned faintly, rubbing his face.

“...sorry?”

Balthazar shook his head, motioning for her to continue. Santa straightened up and spoke.

“You didn’t find any matches, did you?”

 

* * *

 

[♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CUzZjWXlBdF9NQkk)

Room B93 was, unsurprisingly, identical in layout and furnishings to B92. It made sense, Balthazar told himself, that their puzzles were one of a piece.

The entrance’s picture frame was nearly empty, as though the photo had been cut in quarters and three of them removed.

By contrast, the display case was full, and Castiel peered into it curiously.

“There’s got to be a key to this somewhere,” Santa told him, pointing to a single, black-and-white square plate inside.

“That’s part of the picture in the hall. Did you find any other pieces?”

Cass shook his head, and Balthazar spoke up.

“We did find this,” he offered the dresser key to Santa, who looked at it and simply shook her head.

“That’s too big,” she said, pointing to the case’s keyhole. “Must be for something else. Probably something in the bedroom.”

“‘Something’?”

“It’s too dark to figure out what,” Santa gestured at the bedroom door. “The light doesn’t work. We’ve just got this…”

She lifted a large candlestick off the coffee table, looking expectantly at Balthazar.

“Ah, and we’ve got these,” Balthazar pulled the matchbox out of his pocket.

Santa nodded and held the candle out to be lit.

“Oh, _finally,"_ Lotus rounded the corner into the living room, looking understandably exasperated, and headed straight for the bedroom door.

Santa followed, setting the candle down on the dresser and turning to Balthazar.

“That key you found, try it here,” she said.

“Would you believe we _found_ it in our dresser?” Balthazar chuckled as he unlocked the drawer,

pulling it open to reveal a single, black-and-white square. “Well, that’s two accounted for.”

“And our missing shower curtain,” Lotus added, holding a folded, blue sheet. “It was on the bed.”

She made to open it, but stopped, startled, when the light went out. They all turned to the dresser, where the candle had burned out.

“That was what, two minutes?” asked Santa incredulously. Castiel picked it up, stepping into the brighter doorway and peering at the bare candlestick.

“I think _this_ would fit in the display case,” he murmured. The wax had completely burned away, leaving a small, pointed, key-shaped tip.

“Good,” Lotus nodded, “and you two help me with the curtain,” she added, to Balthazar and Santa.

The back wall of the shower was made up of small tiles, alternating two shades of green and two of purple in a truly obnoxious pattern. Balthazar wrinkled his nose, more than happy to cover it up.

“Woah…” Santa stared at the unfolded curtain as they hung it. “Is that a clue, or a creepy accident?”

The blue canvas sported a large hole, about eye level. Balthazar peered through it, but met only Cass’ amused face.

“You’re blocking my view,” he said cheerily.

Balthazar stepped out of the shower, and Castiel backed up to the wall, pointing to the hole.

“If you stand back far enough,” he said, “you can kind of pinpoint one tile in particular.”

“Which one?” Santa called. Her hand appeared at the edge of the gash, pressed against the tile wall. “Here?”

“More to our right, and a little higher,” Balthazar answered.

“Here?”

“Yes!”

“I’ll pull it out.”

Balthazar ducked back inside as Santa and Lotus attempted to dig the tile out of the wall, with no success.

“I don’t think that’s the answer,” muttered Lotus.

“But it _is_ the right tile,” Balthazar insisted.

“It’s the wrong _room!”_ Santa realized loudly. “Like the dresser key, and the candle.”

“Ah!” Balthazar looked at the wall, counting the placement of the tile. Santa followed his gaze.

“It’s the fifth from the top, and third from the right.”

“I’ll go,” said Cass as soon as Santa had spoken, ducking back out of the shower.

“That’s got to be the last tile,” Lotus crossed her arms with a small smirk. “We’re almost finished here.”

“Yeah…” Santa seemed to sigh, looking at Balthazar for a moment before speaking again.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

She turned, heading for the living room before Balthazar had even answered, but he followed, assuming perhaps a question about Cass’ - June’s - fever.

Santa was waiting by the sofa. She reached into her jacket and handed Balthazar a narrow slip of paper.

It was a simple, white bookmark, with a four-leaf clover pressed inside. Balthazar turned it over, but there was nothing written on either side, no indication it was part of the puzzle, although he couldn’t imagine it were anything else, unless…

“This is yours?” He held it back out to Santa, but she wouldn’t take it, shaking her head.

“Nope,” she shrugged. “I just found it between the couch cushions. I didn’t even think it was a clue; looks like I was right.”

She made no move to retrieve it, and Balthazar couldn’t help a suspicious frown.

“Why don’t _you_ keep it?” He held it out further, and Santa took a half-step back, crossing her arms.

“Because I don’t fucking want it.”

Her snapped response startled Balthazar, and perhaps even Santa herself. She softened her expression and casually waved a hand.

"In Japanese, 'four' is pronounced the same as 'death'," she explained. "So it's bad luck."

"But it's a four-leaf _clover,"_ Balthazar played along. _"Good_ luck. They cancel each other out, wouldn't you say?"

Santa didn't answer immediately. She slipped her hands into her pockets and regarded Balthazar with a knowing smirk.

“Did you know that each leaf on a four-leaf clover stands for something?” She asked him, but he merely shrugged.

“Hope, faith, love, and luck,” she said, “the four things I hate most.”

Balthazar slowly raised his eyebrows, thoroughly unsure if he was being led on. “You... _hate_ those things?”

“That’s right,” Santa’s expression darkened sharply. “Every one of them can betray you. I hate them.”

No sooner had she said it than her anger seemed to fade, replaced with a wan smile.

"Just like 'fate'," she added, "and all that superstitious crap."

"All that-?" Balthazar blinked, then burst out laughing. "Except four being deadly, _that's_ hard science."

“What's so funny?” Castiel, returning from across the hall with Lotus in tow, spoke up from behind them.

Balthazar opened his mouth, but Santa shot him a look, as though daring him to mock her openly.

"...nothing," Balthazar shook his head. "Just a...friendly debate on luck and destiny."

Cass looked disappointed to have missed such an exercise. "You mean like...why are we all here, playing the Nonary Game?"

"Something like that..." Santa shifted awkwardly.

"Now that you mention it," Balthazar took pity on her, changing the subject. "All that monologuing and Zero never explained the name. What is _Nonary_ Game supposed to mean?"

“‘Nona’ is the Latin prefix for nine,” Lotus answered. “You’ve heard ‘uni,’ ‘bi,’ 'tri,’ and so on, I’m sure. So ‘nonary’ would mean something to do with nine.”

"Right, I get it," Santa nodded. "We’re nine people with nine hours to find a door labelled nine in order to escape.”

“Each door stays open nine seconds," added Castiel, "and then we have eighty-one - 9 x 9 - to deactivate the bracelet bombs."

“In that case, I would’ve expected more nines in these puzzles,” Balthazar pointed out. “Apart from the rules, I’m not seeing much of a theme here.”

“We’re not even done with this puzzle, so who knows?” said Santa, turning to Castiel. “Did you get the tile, June?”

Cass nodded, holding up all three squares for her to see.

“All right, let’s get out of here!” Santa flashed him a smile and stepped past Balthazar, heading straight for the hall as though the extended tangent weren’t her doing in the first place.

Balthazar scoffed lightly, but said nothing, tucking the bookmark into his pocket and following Castiel to the picture.

Easily assembled, the frame buzzed sharply and slid down to reveal a hidden space in the wall.

Inside was a single, golden key, much like what Balthazar and Cass had found in the drawer of their room. Lotus picked it up, sighed with relief, and held the engraved handle out for them to see.

“Mars!” Santa exclaimed. “Finally!”

They headed out into the hall, standing expectantly in front of the double doors for a long moment before realizing Lotus, and the key, hadn’t followed.

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CZFZPTHNmeURKbVk)

She was staring pensively at the framed picture. Castiel tapped her gently on the shoulder.

“Sorry,” she said. “I just recognized this painting.”

“I wouldn’t call it ‘recognizable’,” Balthazar gestured skeptically at the abstract jumble of black and white.

“You don’t see it?” Lotus arched an eyebrow at him.

“Is it an optical illusion?” asked Santa.

“It’s a funyarinpa,” said Cass.

“It’s a _what?”_ Lotus was clearly boggled by his answer. Santa began to laugh.

With a small smile, Cass leaned forward and began tracing a path around the picture.

“See, these are the wings, and there's the trunk, sucking on a human brai-”

“What the _hell_ is a ‘funyarinpa’?!” Lotus snapped.

“You mean...you don’t know?” Cass stared at her, horrified. “That’s- that’s practically blasphemous!”

Santa broke down, leaning against the wall as she laughed. Balthazar followed suit, although he hadn't a _clue_ why. Cass seemed all too pleased with himself.

“Oh for _God’s_ sake-” Lotus threw up her arms. “It’s a _dog_. Look here--”

She drew her finger over different parts of the picture, describing them one-by-one until the image took shape in their minds.

“Obvious once you know what it is, right?” Lotus smiled at them. “I’ve seen similar pictures before. They were in an interesting book I once read.”

She clearly meant to continue, though this was neither the time nor place for Balthazar to care. But Castiel, even Santa, looked fascinated and didn’t protest, so he merely crossed his arms and listened.

“There’s an English biochemist named Sheldrake,” Lotus began. “He’s proposed a theory called ‘morphic resonance’. Essentially, he says that the ‘shapes of living organisms and their behavioral patterns are transmitted through a field not visible to the eye’-”

“Telepathically?” Cass interjected.

“Hmm…” Lotus frowned. “I suppose that’s good enough for an approximation, but let me give you an example.

“Back in the 80's, a BBC show did an experiment, using two pictures much like this one, the kind that are hard to identify at first, but impossible to see as anything else once you know the answer.

“One was a woman wearing a hat. The other...well, for simplicity’s sake, let’s say it was this dog. First, they gathered a sample of roughly 1000 people in countries this TV show didn’t reach, and asked them to identify the pictures.

“9.2% saw the woman.

“3.9% saw the dog.

“Two days later, the TV show broadcast the solution to the dog picture on the air, with an estimated audience of 200,000 people. Safe to say that the number of people in the world who now recognized the dog was at least 200,000.

“After another two days, they repeated the first experiment, naturally with different respondents, roughly 850 people.

“10% now saw the woman, which is not a statistically significant increase.

“However, the correct responses to the dog picture jumped from 3.9% to 6.8%, and that _is_ significant.”

Lotus looked them over, one-by-one. “The respondents could not have seen the program, so how did that happen? Why did only the results for the dog picture change?”

“You’re saying…” Balthazar slowly uncrossed his arms, tilting his head as he spoke, “that the information passed into this ‘field,’ telepathically transmitting the answer?”

Santa picked up his train of thought. “So, the more people that know the answer, the stronger the ‘resonance,’ and the more people will be able to figure it out on the first try?”

They all waited on Lotus for confirmation, but, to their surprise, she laughed.

“Oh, I read the book,” she waved a hand airily, “and that experiment really did happen, but I’m not saying I believe it.”

“Why not?” Castiel sounded rather offended. Balthazar merely felt embarrassed at his own interest.

“Because it’s all pseudoscience,” Lotus answered curtly. “Just someone latching onto a statistical outlier and running with it. And I’m sure that TV show got _great_ ratings.”

“You’re a better storyteller than I would have guessed,” Santa looked grudgingly impressed. Lotus smiled wryly at her and brushed past Castiel, heading for their exit.

Cass stared at the picture. Balthazar shared a somewhat sheepish look and a decidedly nonchalant shrug with Santa, then touched Cass’ shoulder.

“Let’s see if you’re right about those stairs,” he offered encouragingly. They followed Santa into the hall, where Lotus was opening the double doors.

Outside was a wide corridor, bisected by an imposing metal grate that absolutely refused to budge.

“There isn’t any kind of lock here,” Balthazar observed. “I don’t think it opens at all. But _that_ one-”

He pointed through the first grate to a second one at the far side of the room, lighter both in form and colour.

“-looks like the kind you pull shut, yeah,” Santa nodded.

“It’s blocking the stairs to C Deck,” Cass frowned at the obstruction.

“Then I suppose we’ll be finding a key on our way over,” Balthazar concluded as he stepped away.

Opposite the grate were a pair of elevators. Like those at the central staircase, they did not come when called. To no one’s surprise, there seemed to be only one way forward.

“It’s the kitchen,” Cass announced.

“How do you know?” Her hand on the knob, Lotus turned to peer at him suspiciously.

“I know everything,” Cass deadpanned.

Lotus bristled.

“...about the _Titanic,”_ he added, not a moment too soon.

The awkward silence dissolved as Lotus rolled her eyes, yanking the door open and briskly stepping through it. Santa watched her go, regarding Cass with a mix of confusion and amusement. Balthazar couldn’t help a laugh before he followed the three of them inside.

            “...told you so.”

A far cry from the cozy brightness of 2nd class, the highly utilitarian kitchen was coloured in the same drab beiges and greys as the 3rd class cabin. Across the room from the entrance, past a counter and a utensil-laden station, were two single doors, welded shut by metal plates like those at the central staircase.

“Where’s the exit?” Balthazar called out to his teammates scattered about the room.

“Over here,” Lotus responded from directly to his left, standing in front of a door identical to the one they had entered through, save for a card reader mounted next to it.

“If we can open this one,” she continued once the others had gathered, “we should come out on the other side of that grate.”

Castiel reached into his sweater pocket for the map, presumably to confirm Lotus’ observation.

“Woah, hey-” Santa and Lotus started in surprise at the sight.

“Oh, right…” Cass spread the map out on the counter for them to see. “This was in our cabin bedroom.”

Lotus leaned over the page, her finger tracing a line.

“There, you see?” she said, tapping the paper. “That’s how we’ll reach the stairs.”

“So we’re looking for a key card, for the door,” Santa observed, _"and_ a regular key, for the stairs. This place is pretty big; we should split up to search.”

Balthazar eyed a pair of unbolted doors across the room, and headed for the one just right of the entrance with Cass in tow.

“I said _split up!"_ Santa called after them. Balthazar gave her a friendly wave.

The small room was warm compared to the outside. Balthazar smiled as he inhaled the pleasant, if rather dated, scent of food from the shelves, all but one of which were draped with white canvas.

“What kind is this?” asked Cass, approaching the uncovered shelf and lifting a large wheel of cheese.

“Gouda,” answered Balthazar, “and probably still good.”

“Really?” Cass smiled curiously. “How?”

“As long as the casing is unbroken,” Balthazar explained, tapping the shell, “gouda is surprisingly shelf stable. It shouldn’t go off, even at room temperature.”

“Then we should take some with us,” said Castiel, hefting his prize higher. “Who knows when we last ate?”

“Good idea,” Balthazar turned to grab one of his own, but paused. “Hang on, there’s something hidden back here…”

A green, glass bottle was nestled in behind a cheese wheel. The label was faded, but a quick whiff of the contents told Balthazar all he needed.

“Cooking oil,” he announced, settling it into his pocket and hoping it stayed put.

“Sounds like we’ll need the gouda then, whether we want it or not,” said Cass. “We should check the other shelves for ingredients.”

“Seems _my_ expertise is up next,” Balthazar smirked proudly, pushing the shelves' curtains aside. None of the assorted stacks of tins and cans stood out, but a slim, wooden case caught his eye.

Inside was a large knife, rusted to uselessness.

“Oh dear,” Balthazar murmured, lifting the knife for a closer inspection. “This one could’ve used a better casing.”

“It’s futile,” said Cass, peering over his shoulder.

“Unless we can sharpen it,” Balthazar answered, laying the knife back down. “Unlike bad cheese, this _can_ be undone.”

“You don’t know futility?” Cass seemed to be suppressing an eager grin.

“Well, I try to stay optimistic,” Balthazar chuckled, shutting the case and turning to him. “What is it?”

“There was an American novel called _Futility_ that predicted the sinking of the _Titanic,”_ said Cass, rocking ever-so-slightly on his heels.

“Curse and all?”

Cass shook his head. “But it was uncannily similar. The name of the ship, its nationality, course, departure time, size, displacement, maximum speed, number of passengers, crew and lifeboats, even the cause and location of the accident, and the damage, all matched up perfectly with the real thing, fourteen years before it actually happened.”

Balthazar stared, blinking in surprise. “That _is_ uncanny. It must either be true or a complete hoax-”

“It _was_ a hoax,” Cass startled Balthazar with the simple reply. “Well, there _were_ some genuine similarities, but it was also heavily edited after the sinking to make it _really_ uncanny.”

_“But-”_ he added quickly, “there were two other stories, one in 1886 and one in 1892, that really _did_ predict the sinking. William Thomas Stead wrote them both using automatic writing.”

“Automatic…” Balthazar was sure he’d heard the term before. “Ah, writing while possessed, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“But possessed by who?” Balthazar asked. “He was _predicting_ the disaster, no?”

“By _himself,”_ said Castiel, his voice taking on a conspiratorial tone. “Stead was a passenger _on_ the _Titanic._ He wrote down what he saw with his own eyes, twenty years before it happened.”

“Precognition…” Balthazar mulled it over as he picked up the knife case and tucked it under his arm.

“They may not have been as impressive as _Futility,”_ said Cass as they exited the pantry, “but at least it’s _true."_

They spotted Santa near the back of the room, but Lotus was about where they’d left her, inspecting a sheet of paper on the counter by the doors. She looked up as Castiel set down his cheese.

“What is that?”

“Dinner,” Balthazar answered cheerfully. “And there’s plenty more.” He nodded at her hand. “What did you find?”

Lotus smirked, handing him the paper. Balthazar read it out.

“‘Appetizer 9, Meat dish 10, Soup A, Seafood dish F’.” He put the voucher down and counted the plates.

“Appetizer 9, that’s fine,” he muttered, “but there are _sixteen_ meat dishes, ten soup, and fifteen seafood.”

“I _would_ say we need to fix this,” Balthazar added as he straightened up, mirroring Lotus’ smile, “but I have a feeling you’ve got the answer.”

“It’s hexadecimal,” she said.

“Hm?”

“Decimal, or base-10, is what we normally use to count,” Lotus explained, “but this voucher is using base-16, or hexadecimal.” She waved a hand. “It isn’t that complicated. Just think of it as six letters, A - F, added between the numbers 9 and 10. ‘A’ in hex is 10 in decimal, ‘F’ is 15, and hex 10-”

“-is decimal sixteen,” Balthazar calculated. Lotus nodded.

“Who uses hexadecimal?” Cass frowned, then shrugged. “It just seems so...random.”

“Programmers, mainly,” Lotus answered, “There are plenty more like it; just add more letters.”

Cass nodded, and Lotus fixed them both with a slightly more serious expression.

“This wasn’t a puzzle, by the way,” she said. “But I have a feeling hex is a hint, so keep it in mind.”

She left them at the counter, and Balthazar gave the voucher one more glance before turning to Cass.

“Where to now?”

“The other door, I suppose?”

“No good,” Santa spoke up from behind them, shaking her head. “There’s a rusted bolt holding the door shut.”

“More rust…” Balthazar sighed. “-ah!”

He pulled the small bottle of oil out of his pocket and headed for the door next to the pantry.

“Don’t we need that for cooking?” asked Cass.

“There’s a grill over there that’s already on,” Santa told him as Balthazar carefully oiled the bolt. “Other than that, nothing here seems to actually work, so…”

The two of them stepped back as Balthazar wrenched the bolt back . Almost to his surprise, the cooking oil had done the trick, and Santa eagerly pulled the door open.

“Oh, _no.”_

All three of them stopped short, shivering in the frigid room.

“I had n-no idea the freezer was right next t-to the pantry…” Cass observed, hugging his arms. “The insulation must b-be really good.”

“Yeah, f-fantastic,” Santa groaned. “I’m leaving this to you two, okay?”

“Hold on!” Balthazar shifted his weight rapidly from foot to foot, his breath coming out in puffs of white air. “The more people in here, the faster this will go.”

“Dammit-” Santa shuddered with the cold and glared at Balthazar momentarily, but stayed. “Let’s make it fas-”

_*BAM!*_

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4Cckg0THVHTGJ0Tlk)

The door slammed shut behind them, but the loud pop and hissing sound were much more alarming. Balthazar dashed to the exit and grabbed the handle--

_“OW!”_

He jumped back, burned by the cold. Next to him, Santa pounded on the door, yelling as loud as she could.

_“LOTUS! ARE YOU THERE?!”_

“What?! What’s wrong?” They could hear her grab the handle from the other side. “Let me in if you want to talk!”

“The pipe burst!” Santa called back. “The handle’s completely frozen! We need you to open it, _please!”_

“I’ll look for something to pry it open!” Lotus shouted. “But you’re three people! Try to figure it out!”

She hurried away before they could protest, but Castiel at least didn’t seem all that shocked by her command.

“You don’t think…” he frowned, still hugging himself against the cold, “this is a puzzle?”

“Doesn’t this seem kind of high stakes?!” Santa demanded.

“After the near drowning?” Balthazar raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t quite considered it until Cass spoke up, but… “No, not really. We should get moving before we become permanent residents.”

They nodded all too vigorously and fanned out to search.

A lightly stocked corner shelf stood next to a large cabinet, which Balthazar quickly opened, his jacket sleeve folded over his hand against the frigid metal. There was hardly anything inside save chunks of frozen meat and a bag that, he guessed, held an ice block.

“What good is any of this?!” Santa snapped. She jerked her head at a trap door in the middle of the floor. “Help me open that!”

The compartment was shallow, and held even less than the cabinet. Balthazar lifted a length of rope and an empty water bottle from inside and held them up to Santa.

“Any ideas?”

“Oh, shit…” Santa’s eyes moved slowly from Balthazar back to the cabinet. “I don’t think that was regular ice in there…”

“No?”

Santa shook her head. “I think it was _dry_ ice. I think we’re supposed to _blow_ the door back open.”

Balthazar raised both his eyebrows and stared at her. “And we’re supposed to do that _how,_ exactly?”

“You must have gone to a pretty boring high school,” said Cass, having ended his search of the shelf, “if you never made a dry ice bomb.”

Santa nodded sagely. Balthazar could hardly believe what he was hearing, but he knew this wasn’t the time. Clearly, their entrapment _was_ just another high stakes puzzle.

“All right, explain it to me,” said Balthazar as he closed the trapdoor. Santa shivered violently, but began to explain.

“Okay- so- unlike water ice, dry ice doesn’t become a liquid at normal air pressure,” she began. “Under -109ºF, it’s a solid; anything above that, it goes straight to gas. And if you melt it in an airtight container, like, say-” she nodded down at Balthazar’s hand, “-a water bottle, you can make it explode.”

“We can use that rope to tie it to the door,” said Castiel, opening the cabinet and retrieving the bag of ice. “Wait...how will this block fit in the bottle?”

“We’ll have to crush it into chunks somehow,” Santa answered. “Grab something from the shelf.”

“I already did!”

Balthazar hadn’t noticed, but Cass had been holding a round, frozen hunk of meat in his hands.

“I think we need this anyway,” he explained, holding it out. “See, there’s a tag sticking out with some kind of equation written on it; we just can’t get it out while it’s still cold.” He kneeled, placing the bag of dry ice on the floor and raising the frozen meat above his head.

“Can you hold the ice?” he asked Balthazar.

“I hope your aim is good,” Balthazar mumbled, as though he had much choice.

Together, they beat the block of dry ice into manageable bits, and carefully poured them into the empty bottle. Santa let a few drops of warmer water from the broken pipe fall into it before shutting it tight, and Castiel made surprisingly skillful use of the rope, anchoring the bottle in place onto the door handle.

Santa knocked on the inside of the door, calling out to Lotus once again.

“Are you there?!”

“Yes! Are you all right?” Lotus seemed to be just outside. “There’s nothing useful out here!”

“It’s fine!” Santa assured her. “It's a puzzle! We’re gonna blow the ice off, so stand back!”

“You’re going to _what?!”_

“Just stand back, okay?!”

Santa stepped away from the door, glancing back and forth across the room.

“We just need something to throw at it,” she told them. “All it needs is a little nudge, and it’ll pop.”

“Ice that melts above -109º…” Balthazar was still skeptical. “You’re sure about this?”

“Trust me, all of these clues together make perfect sense,” Santa reassured him with. “There are some pretty unique things in the world.”

“Dry ice isn’t unique!” Cass protested. “Ice-9 is just as weird.”

“‘Ice-9’, but that’s--” Balthazar wracked his numbing brain. “That’s Isaac Asimov, not _real_ life.”

“It _was_ Isaac Asimov,” Cass corrected him, “but a real substance just like ice-9 was actually discovered a few years ago, and they named it in his honour.”

“No way…” Santa seemed awed. “What does ice-9 do?”

“It’s more like regular water in that it goes from solid to liquid,” said Cass, “but the melting point is 96º.”

“Ice...that melts at 96º?”

“Or you could think of it as water that freezes at 96º,” Cass shrugged.

“But what then…” Balthazar almost couldn’t think what to say, “what _is_ it, exactly? Is it still even H2O?”

Cass hummed under his breath, looking off to the side as he thought it over.

“Think of it like diamonds and graphite,” he said finally. “They’re both made of carbon, but depending on the structure of the crystallization, you get completely different substances. You could say...ice-9 is a polymorph of H2O, I guess.”

“You mean--” Santa looked shocked, _"theoretically,_ H2O could _become_ ice-9? At any time?!”

"Sounds like the next ice age," Balthazar muttered.

Castiel didn’t look nearly as horrified as the implication demanded. Instead, he smiled, looking back and forth between Santa and Balthazar.

“Have you heard the story about the crystallization of glycerin?”

They both shook their heads.

“For 150 years after its discovery, no matter how it was warmed, or cooled, or treated in whatever way, glycerin wouldn’t crystallize.” Castiel was shaking, they all were, but his voice was steady. “Then, in 1920, some glycerin on a ship to England crystallized spontaneously.

“Of course, scientists everywhere asked for a sample. With a seed crystal, future crystallization would be much simpler. But not only did the glycerin encouraged by the seed crystallize, all nearby samples did as well.

“All of a sudden, glycerin everywhere began to crystallize when cooled below 64º, even though it had never worked before. It _still_ works, to this day, but no one knows why.”

“‘Morphic resonance’, was it?” Balthazar chuckled, but Cass nodded emphatically.

“Isn’t that what it sounds like?” he insisted. “Now that I’ve heard of it, I can’t help but think…”

“I don’t know about you,” Santa interjected, “but I’m too _cold_ to think right now.”

Cass did not seem pleased with her comment.

“I may go by ‘Santa’ here, but I didn’t grow up in the North Pole,” she returned Cass’ frown. “Can we finish this later, maybe?”

“I _was_ finished,” Cass sniffed.

“You said we needed something to throw at it, right?” Balthazar asked Santa, neatly stepping in. She nodded.

“I guess we’ll have to throw some of that meat,” she said. “There’s nothing else.”

“No, hang on-” Balthazar crouched down to the floor and gingerly picked up a stray piece of the dry ice with his sleeve.

“All right, come on-” Balthazar knelt by the floor compartment, on the opposite side to the freezer door.

“When I throw the thing,” he instructed, turning to each of them, “June, you pull me down, and Santa, you pull the door up to shield us.”

Cass nodded, loosely grabbing the sides of Balthazar’s jacket. Santa reached for the handle of the trap door, poised and ready.

Balthazar took a deep breath and carefully aimed for the primed water bottle.

“3…

                                 “2…

                                                                  “1…”

_*BANG!*_

The explosion rattled their ears, and they leapt up all at once, bursting out through the door.

“Wha--?!”

Lotus jumped back in surprise as they flew past her, following Santa across the room to the heated grill, huddling over it and rubbing their limbs, desperate to regain warmth.

Lotus followed them slowly, as though she could hardly believe they had survived.

“You _really_ blew the door open?” she asked, sounding both bewildered and impressed.

“Yeah, that was the point,” Santa, once thawed, turned to her to explain. Balthazar straightened up as well, but a sizzling sound from just behind him caught his attention.

Cass had lain his frozen pork prize on the grill and was contentedly cooking it, turning it over with the handle of a ladle he had snatched from the nearby stand.

“I still don’t think we’ll be able to pull the paper out,” he told Balthazar. “We just need to be able to cut the meat a little.”

“Cut... ah-” Balthazar retrieved the large knife from the table by the entrance.

“We need to sharpen this,” he explained to Lotus and Santa. “Any ideas?”

Lotus glanced down at the counter in between them, next to a sink full of dirty dishes.

“Isn’t that a whetstone right there?”

“What do you do that you recognize a whetstone on sight?” Santa asked for both of them. Lotus smirked at her before offering the block to Balthazar.

“Do you know how to use it?”

Balthazar shook his head and handed her the rusty knife. Skillful and efficient, she drew the knife over and over across the stone, grinding the rust away bit by bit.

“This is still old,” she said as she finished, “but you could cut something soft with it, I’m sure.”

“Like undercooked pork?” he asked. Lotus gave him a curious look, then followed his gaze to Castiel, waving them over to the grill.

“Watch your fingers,” he warned, gently gripping the tag as Balthazar cut through the meat.

“‘C + 10 + F’…” read Castiel out loud when the tag had finally been extracted.

“Ha!” Lotus crossed her arms triumphantly.

“Hexadecimal, right?” Santa smiled back at her.

Lotus nodded and pointed to her left, just under the counter next to the grill.

Balthazar hadn’t noticed it, but a keypad had been installed on the doors of an industrial oven.

“Well, ‘C’ is 12, and ‘F’ is 15,” he counted aloud, kneeling in front of it. “I’m going to assume ‘10’ is also hex, so…”

12 + 16 + 15 = 43

He punched the answer into the keypad, and was rewarded with a friendly beep and the distinct _*click*_ of an opened lock.

Balthazar’s stomach almost dropped when, at a glance, the oven was entirely empty, but in fact a black and purple key card lay inside.

“Saturn…” murmured Castiel, staring at the symbol on the card. “This must go to the elevators by the central stairs.”

“So it doesn’t open the door here?” Santa sounded alarmed. “Now what?”

“We’re out of clues,” said Balthazar as he stood up, “so I say we try it anyways.”

He was confident the Saturn card was their key to the other side, but he hesitated in front of the door all the same. Santa shifted her weight uneasily.

“If we missed something in the freezer…”

_"Don't,"_ said Cass.

Balthazar slid the card through the reader…

...and just like that, they were free.

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CcUp3cWo4ek5tNzQ)

As expected, they found themselves on the other side of a familiar, imposing metal grate. Balthazar peered through it at the elevators and kitchen entrance, if only to get his bearings. Castiel fished the B Deck map out of his sweater once again, probably for the same reason, and spread it out on the floor.

“We have four possible routes from here,” he said.

“First, there’s this big room.”

He pointed out a pair of ornate, wooden doors in an enclave. Lotus hurried over to check, but they merely rattled when she pushed.

“Okay, next is that hallway,” Cass went on, jerking his head over his shoulder, “but I know that one’s pointless, see?”

He traced a finger down the hall on the map, and the others sighed in recognition.

“Door 5,” said Balthazar. “Then…” He looked back up at the locked, wooden doors. “Do you think the others are in there?”

“Nope,” answered Cass with surprising certainty. “They’ve already taken route 4, look-”

To his embarrassment, Balthazar hadn’t noticed that the grate in front of the stairs had been opened.

“Oh my God…” Santa stared at it in horror. “We forgot the key for that.”

Castiel gave her a puzzled look. “But...we don’t need it.”

“That’s not the point!” snapped Santa. “We didn’t _know_ that until just now. This ‘game’ is life or death-- I can’t _believe_ we forgot something that important!”

Their faces sank; Santa was exactly right. It was a stroke of luck that this hadn’t screwed them all. Rather morosely, Castiel gathered the map and folded it back into his sweater. Balthazar touched his shoulder, and Cass managed an encouraging smile as he looked up.

Balthazar smiled back...then stopped, his heart sinking.

“Oh my God…”

The others froze, tense and fearful as they turned to him.

“We forgot the cheese.”

Castiel and Lotus both looked crestfallen. Santa glanced around at all of them.

“Wait, you found food? _Edible_ food?” she sounded justifiably outraged.

“Let’s just catch up to the others, all right?” Lotus sounded tired, and continued down the stairs without waiting on an answer.

The C Deck corridor below was identical in shape to that above, but with no grates barring their way. Out of curiousity and a healthy self-interest, Balthazar continued down the stairs to D Deck…

...at least as far as possible.

The surface of the water reaching halfway to C Deck was as smooth as that under the central staircase, and Balthazar was at least relieved it had not risen at all.

“I guess that makes Zero a _little_ bit trustworthy,” said Cass, leaning over the railing.

“Glad we can trust their sadism to hold out for the full nine hours,” Balthazar griped, giving Cass a grim pat on the shoulder as he climbed back up.

Across the hall stood a familiar set of elevators, with one important difference.

A blue card reader sat between them, etched with an astrological symbol Balthazar _almost_ recognized.

“Venus...with horns?” he turned expectantly to Castiel, who laughed.

“Mercury,” said Cass. “Those ‘horns’ are the wings on Hermes’ staff.”

Santa, who had been staring quite intently at the reader, slowly uncrossed her arms as she spoke.

“I suppose this was kind of obvious, given the signs we found out there, but if the Saturn keycard is only for that one pair of elevators by the grand staircase, then I guess that means we _will_ be backtracking at some point, right?”

“Good point,” added Lotus. “I would assume those locks lead to other numbered doors, then.”

“You don’t think we _were_ supposed to go back through door 5?” Cass wondered aloud, “Since we have the Saturn card and all?”

“At first I thought Team 5 might have done that,” said Lotus, “but the fact that they unlocked the gate to the stairs, probably not for _our_ benefit, says this is the way forward...for now, at least.”

“Then...where are they?” asked Santa.

A quick look told them they had two routes forward.

The hall to their left stretched on interminably, lined with a boggling number of single, wooden doors.

The one to their right was no more than thirty feet.

“Should we take a vote?” Santa proposed sarcastically. The others _almost_ laughed.

“We can come back when we’re eight people,” Lotus walked off to their right before any of them had answered, not that anyone disagreed.

The right hallway ended in an alcove with four sets of French doors set into the wall facing them as they entered.

Balthazar approached the nearest set of doors and gave the handle a tug. To his relief, it was unlocked, and the others followed him inside.

They stopped short, awed by the sight, even as they swallowed back the harsh, sterile scent that pervaded the air.

The room was cavernous, lined wall-to-wall with metal bedframes and a few shelves holding old bottles of medicines and surgical tools.

_Antiseptic,_ thought Balthazar, was the cloying smell he’d noticed. This was a hospital.

The toneless grey aesthetic and mattresses so thin he’d mistaken them for part of the bedframe reminded Balthazar of the 3rd class cabin he’d woken up in, as did the eye-catching red paint on the back wall.

Carefully, Balthazar and the others wended their way through the sea of beds to inspect the opposite side. Four new doors lined the wall.

The leftmost door, closest to their entrance, bore a 3.

The door second from the left was the only one without a number. Balthazar pulled at the handles, but it was locked all the same.

The last two doors, to the far right of the room, bore a 7,

and an 8, respectively.

“Okay, that’s five down out of nine,” observed Santa. “Good, we’re just over halfway already.”

“Not until we’ve gone through them,” Balthazar answered.

“Good luck with that,” Lotus spoke up, studying the RED by Door 8. “Look at this.”

“Remember the REDs by the other doors?” she asked them. “If no one was inside, they said ‘vacant’...”

“...but this one is blank.”

“Ah!” Balthazar’s stomach lurched.

Cass and Santa darted away to check the other two, and they did not look pleased when they returned.

“Door 7’s the same,” Cass told them dejectedly.

“And Door 3,” added Santa. “You think Zero messed up the maintenance? Or are they just messing with us?”

“Check the bottoms and you’ll have your answer,” a chipper voice spoke up from behind them.


	3. Large Hospital Room

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CZFZPTHNmeURKbVk)

Balthazar and Castiel sat side-by-side on a hospital bed as the two teams exchanged information. Cass had been right that Team 5 had started in a 1st class cabin, and after that, the casino, inside which they’d found a key engraved with the symbol of Venus that they used to open the stairs.

As Team 4 had entered the large hospital room, Team 5, they said, had briefly searched the long hall full of rooms.

“We only opened a handful,” said Duo, “but they’re hospital rooms, too. Single ones.”

“That’s...a _lot_ of hospital rooms for a cruise ship, isn’t it?” asked Santa.

“Yes…” Cass looked pensive, “and I’m starting to think this _isn’t_ a replica of the _Titanic_ after all, but...”

“I think it might be the _Gigantic_ instead,” Seven answered. Cass’ face brightened at Seven’s apparent familiarity with the White Star Line family.

“Was that one like the _Titanic?”_ asked Santa. Seven nodded to her, and began to explain.

_“Titanic_ actually had two sister ships, all three of which were largely identical. One of them, the _Gigantic,_ was pressed into service as a hospital ship after World War I broke out.

“Only a year later, it struck a German mine in the Aegean sea and had to run aground to save itself from sinking.”

“And someone like Zero got it...how?” Santa crossed her arms, frowning. “Does this mean we’re being held by the UK government instead?”

Seven smiled and shrugged wanly at her, but Cass picked up the thread, his fists bunched excitedly on his lap.

“I don’t know who Zero is or how they got it, but the _Gigantic_ might have been bought by an Englishman, Lord Gordain. He was a survivor of the _Titanic_ disaster and became a collector of all things _Titanic-_ related. He _wanted_ the ship itself, but of course the wreck wouldn’t even be discovered until 1985...

“But! he did hear about her sister ship after it was out of commission, and purchased her at auction...or so the rumour goes.”

“You really think someone bought a genuine, artifact _cruise liner,”_ asked Quatre incredulously, “just to turn it into _this,_ this-- Nonary Game?”

“Yes, isn’t it _terrible?”_ Cass stiffened with outrage. Quatre gave him a strange look in return, even as her sister seemed amused.

As though to interject, a loud, familiar chime sounded from somewhere quite far away. It took a moment, but Balthazar recognized the sound:

the clock above the central stairs.

 

...10

                                                       ...11

...12.

 

It was midnight. A full third of their time had already passed.

“Does it matter?” Lotus spoke up. “We’re wasting time here. We need to divvy up the rooms out there and start searching, _now.”_

As Duo had shown them, there was a long, thin gap on the bottom of each RED, from which crucial hardware had been removed.

“There’s nowhere other than that hall we haven’t searched yet,” Seven pointed out. “I estimated about fifty rooms, and I’d say we checked four before we heard you in here and came back. If each of us searches six rooms, that should about cover the rest.”

They agreed to reunite in the large hospital room when the clock chimed next. If someone located the missing parts, they were to call for the others.

Balthazar heard no such call as he searched, doing his best to be as thorough as possible without a clear sense of how much time was passing. He had only just finished his sixth assigned room when the bell tolled again, just once.

He jogged back down the hall, meeting up with Cass waiting by the double doors. When they entered, they found they were the last to arrive, with all of the others gathered tellingly by the RED in front of Door 8.

“Weren’t we supposed to signal if we found them?” asked Balthazar, a little irritably.

“So it _wasn’t_ either of you?” Lotus turned to them to ask.

Puzzled, Balthazar and Castiel looked at each other, but said nothing.

“I was the first one back after the bell,” Lotus told them, “but all three REDs were already fixed when I got here.”

“And no one called?” Cass frowned.

Balthazar couldn’t help but wonder if they were being tricked somehow. He regarded each of the others carefully as they shook their heads to say “no.”

“Hang on…” he murmured, counting one more time to be certain. “...where’s Duo?”

“That was my _next_ question,” said Lotus, scrutinizing them both again.

“We were searching our twelve rooms together,” said Quatre, her voice ever-so-slightly hoarse. “Duo checked everywhere she could reach, then moved to the next room while I finished up. But after the second room, I couldn’t find her anymore.”

She raised her eyes, watching Balthazar and Cass’ faces intently. “Did _you_ see her?”

They both shook their heads adamantly. Quatre seemed to accept the answer, her face falling as she stared at the floor.

“It’s doubtful she got lost and has wandered away by mistake,” said Ace. “I can’t say why she kept quiet, but she must have gone somewhere for a reason. We need to retrace our steps and find her as soon as possible.”

They set no time limit in their hurry, every person splitting up and rushing where they felt most certain.

Balthazar and Castiel jogged back up to B Deck, intending to retrace their steps, but the door to the kitchen was locked.

“She could still be in there,” Cass insisted. “The door might’ve just locked behind her.”

Balthazar nodded, and together they knocked loudly on the door, calling her code name.

“Duo?!”

_“Duo!”_

For several long moments they stood in silence, their ears pressed to the metal, but there was no sound of movement whatsoever from within.

“Well, we know the entrance is locked,” said Balthazar, “so she can’t have gotten out the _other_ door.”

“Then the Door 5 rooms are next,” Cass nodded.

Lotus was standing just outside the casino exit, staring alternately at her nails and a meaningless point on the wall, her expression rather grim.

“...what are you doing?” Cass sounded unimpressed.

“Isn’t it obvious?” She looked neither startled nor pleased to see them. “I’m looking for Duo.”

“Hmm... No, I’m just not seeing it,” answered Balthazar.

“Fine.” Lotus fixed her eyes on them, her expression taking on a certain hardness.

“Let me ask you this, then,” she said, “who would _you_ leave behind?”

“Leave behind...where?” Cass frowned.

Lotus seemed disappointed with him. “Where else? On this _ship.”_

“What-?” Cass started. “No one, obviously.”

Lotus looked at him with something approaching pity, and Balthazar slowly realized where she was leading them.

“Don’t you remember the rules?” she asked. “Only 3 - 5 people can go through one numbered door. Zero wants us to work together, but that rule won’t change when we reach Door 9. If the eight of us now make it there, at _least_ three people will be left behind.”

“At once,” Cass interjected. “Only 3 - 5 people can go through _at once._ But the eight of us can make two teams with digital roots of 9. As soon as the RED reads ‘vacant’, the second team can go.”

“In less than five hours?” Lotus sounded entirely unconvinced.

“It’ll be faster once the first team solves the puzzles,” Cass mirrored her confident smirk. “Team two just has to run through.”

Lotus opened her mouth, but Castiel wasn’t finished.

“And as a backup plan, team one can still get help once they’ve escaped.”

 _"I repeat,_ in less than five hours?” Lotus cut in angrily. “You realize we are almost certainly out to sea, don’t you? How many lifeboats do you think are out there? How do you know the exit door will even open more than once? Why would someone who made us swallow _bombs_ rig the game so everyone can get out alive?”

Lotus sighed suddenly, her expression fading into sadness.

“Would you two _kindly_ leave me alone,” she said, turning away. “I need some time to think.”

Cass didn’t seem sure how to react. Balthazar walked around him, touching his shoulder wordlessly, and they continued on down the hall.

“Wait--” Quietly, Balthazar stopped Castiel just outside the door to the 1st class cabin. It was slightly ajar, and a quick look down revealed it had been propped open with some sort of glass plate.

They crept into the empty bedroom and paused, wondering if they should call out. A single person’s footsteps approached from the cabin hall, and the two of them drew themselves up as though ready to fight.

It was Seven who strolled in at his usual languid pace. His expression tightened when he saw Balthazar and Castiel.

“Did you find her?” he asked straight away.

“No,” said Balthazar. “Did she come through here?”

“There’s no sign of her,” Seven frowned, looking off. He started towards the exit, but Balthazar called him back.

“Did you put that plate in the door so you could get back out?” It was the only explanation, yet Balthazar felt compelled to ask.

“No,” Seven surprised him. “I put it there when we left so we could get back _in.”_

“Good thinking,” Cass nodded approvingly.

“I didn’t see one in the casino door, though,” Balthazar pressed. Seven turned away, to the door beside the one he had entered, motioning for them to look through.

Inside the walk-in closet was a waist-high cupboard with pale green doors, atop which was a small, square combination safe.

“We never opened that,” explained Seven, “but it’s not empty. Duo suggested it might not be something we _need_ to escape, but maybe something we _want._ Say, a clue to Zero’s identity.”

He shrugged, shutting the door once more. “So I thought I’d make sure the door didn’t lock behind us.”

It was quite clever, Balthazar had to admit, at least to himself.

“So, we should be on the lookout for a combination,” said Cass.

“Right,” Seven agreed, “but I don’t expect it to be as obvious as this safe.”

Lotus was no longer by the casino as they walked past and back down to C Deck, but they could hear her calling Duo, along with Ace and Quatre, from somewhere down the long hallway full of doors.

“Need anymore hands?” Seven asked Ace as he passed between hospital rooms.

“If you wouldn’t mind, please,” Ace seemed winded from the search. He nodded to Balthazar and Castiel. “If you two are available, would you wait in the large room in case Duo returns?”

“If you’re sure we’re not needed,” answered Balthazar. Ace merely nodded and hurried off after Seven.

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CcUp3cWo4ek5tNzQ)

The big hospital room seemed empty when they entered, but as they passed between the beds they could see Santa was at the back, inspecting the RED by Door 7.

She turned and threw them an inquisitive look, as if to ask _“any luck?”_

They shook their heads and lowered themselves onto the nearest bed. Santa stared at the machine a moment longer, then took a seat opposite them.

“While we wait,” she said, leaning slightly forward, “can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Balthazar shrugged.

“Who do _you_ think fixed the REDs?”

Balthazar and Cass looked at each other. Honestly, in his hurry Balthazar had not even considered the question.

“I guess...it could still have been Duo, somehow…” Cass spoke slowly, probably thinking it over for the first time himself as well. Santa nodded at him and turned expectantly to Balthazar.

“I agree with June, it _could_ have been Duo, but…” he said, rubbing his chin, “I think it’s more likely it was Zero.”

“If it _was_ Zero, why did they remove the hardware in the first place, though?” Santa asked, although she didn’t seem doubtful of Balthazar’s hypothesis.

“If I’m right, then...it could only mean Duo’s disappearance was planned,” he said, rather uneasily, “or at least encouraged. Something seems...odd about Zero taking such a direct hand, though.”

“Yeah,” Santa looked away, “maybe.”

She seemed to have another theory, but simply wouldn’t say. They sat in silence until, one-by-one, the other four players gave up on their own searches and filed back into the room. Quatre, gently led by Seven, was last, and she dropped heavily onto one of the beds, staring at the floor.

“This is going to sound preposterous,” said Lotus to the others, “but if she went anywhere, the only place left is behind a numbered door.”

“You’re right,” answered Santa, “that _does_ sound preposterous.”

Lotus glanced at her sharply, but Santa only raised her eyebrows.

“I get it, we’re running out of time and we need to keep going,” she said. "That was just a tasteless way to do it.”

“I never said she went _alone,”_ Lotus countered, “or voluntarily, for that matter. I fully believe we may find her if we go through the doors, and it’s the only thing we _can_ do. However…”

“‘However’...what?” Cass seemed understandably wary of whatever Lotus was about to say.

“However...we can’t all go through,” she said slowly.

“You mean, we should leave someone behind in case Duo comes back?” asked Seven.

“No,” said Lotus, “I mean the seven of us can’t make the right digital roots, not without Duo.”

A chill passed through the group; it seemed Lotus was the only one to do the math.

 _“But_ if we make two teams of three,” she quickly added, “we _can_ go through with only one person left behind.”

Cass stiffened. “That’s one person too many.”

“Are you _serious?”_ Lotus snapped. _"You're_ the one who thinks we can all get off this ship in time!”

“You don’t even have to think that far ahead,” said Seven, just as Cass opened his mouth. “We already know we’ll be backtracking as far as the central staircase. Whoever stays behind is just having a break.”

The idea didn’t seem to appeal, although Seven had probably meant it humourously.

“Yeah, but…” Santa spoke tentatively, “if we only go through two doors, we don’t _know_ we’ll find the key to get back there. Whoever stays behind...really might end up trapped here.”

“And how can we even decide who to abandon?” Cass demanded. “Take a vote, maybe?!”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Ace, who had not said a word until that moment, suddenly spoke up.

“I will stay,” he smiled at them, his serene expression just as comforting as his quiet insistence.

“...why?” Santa asked for all of them. “I mean, I’m grateful, but…”

“I agree with June,” Ace explained, with a nod to Cass. “If you hurry, there may be time to come back and rescue me. I would very much appreciate if you would do that; I have no intention of dying here.”

He made his way to a bed and sat down with a slightly weary sigh. The others, even Lotus, still seemed surprised, and unsure of what to say.

“I’m very tired, you see,” he added. “If this is really just a break, then I’m taking it. I think I’m the oldest one here, after all.”

As though to make his point, his eyes fell shut, and he slumped over onto his side. There was something quite eerie about the sudden silence, and Castiel rushed forward, shaking Ace’s shoulder and calling his name.

A soft _*clink*_ on the floor startled Balthazar; something had fallen out of Ace’s hand.

It was a glass vial, small enough to fit in Balthazar’s palm. The label read “Soporil- _β_.”

“Soporil...beta?” read Lotus over his shoulder. “...That’s an anesthetic!”

A ripple of murmured shock passed through the group.

“O-okay, hang on-” Santa held her hands up. “That label is _much_ too new to be an antique, so…”

“So it’s _probably_ safe,” Seven offered.

“But...why?” Cass looked at all of them.

Balthazar thought first that, perhaps, Ace had lied. If there _wasn’t_ time for them to get off the ship and come back, better to drown in one’s sleep, no?

But the more likely reason quickly dawned on him.

“He didn’t want us to stand around arguing about who to ‘sacrifice’,” he said. “Now we have no choice but to move on - and quickly, if we want to repay him.”

No one disagreed. With a renewed sense of purpose, they put their heads together and sorted out their options.

“We have three,” explained Santa.

\--Plan A--

Go through Door 7 with (358), and  
go through Door 8 with (467).

\--Plan B--

Go through Door 7 with (457), and  
go through Door 8 with (368).

\--Plan C--

Go through Door 7 with (367), and  
go through Door 8 with (458).

“That’s it,” she said, “and Door 3 is right out.”

Balthazar and Cass slowly looked at each other, and Santa caught on straight away.

“I know,” she told them, “and I’m sorry, but 5 and 6, and 7 and 8, can’t go through the same door. Not in order to get all of us out.”

“And how do we choose?” asked Seven.

“Well, does it really matter who goes where?” Santa shrugged at him. “If anyone has a preference, I guess…”

“Door 8,” said Lotus, shrugging at the curious glances. “If it helps us decide faster. It’s the same as my bracelet, that’s all.”

“Sure.” Santa looked at the others. “Anybody else? ...Quatre?”

Quatre almost seemed startled, although she barely raised her eyes, giving a quick glance at the back of the room.

“Door 7, I guess,” her voice was barely audible. “I don’t care.”

“Anyone opposed to Plan B?” Santa asked the others. No one argued; what would be the point?

Seven moved to Quatre’s side to help her stand, and Balthazar joined them as the teams gathered together in front of their doors.


	4. Door 7

Balthazar, Quatre, and Seven solemnly scanned their bracelets and pulled the lever on the RED.

The latter pair stepped through straight away, but Balthazar paused, looking to his right, towards Door 8.

Castiel smiled at him, and they exchanged a brief, determined nod before following their teammates.

The instant he stepped through, a familiar, ominous beeping sounded from his wrist.

Cold sweat beaded on Balthazar’s forehead, but thankfully the DEAD was just ahead, with his teammates waiting urgently in front of it.

Every one of them, even Quatre, sighed with relief in the silence after they had authenticated.

“Well then,” Seven turned to the large, wooden double doors in front of them and raised his eyes to examine a plaque nailed above it.

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CaVRsUUxJYzBaUVU)

_“Operating Room”_

He turned the knob, leading Balthazar and Quatre inside.

Much of the room beyond was obscured by a large, semi-circular partition. Quatre shuffled forward and leaned around it to peek inside...

 

           --then leapt back in shock, almost falling against the wall. Balthazar and Seven hurried to help her, taking a look for themselves deeper inside the room.

_“Holy---”_

Something _very_ much like a corpse lay on a lone table in the middle of the room, starkly illuminated by a large light on the ceiling.

At least it clearly _wasn’t_ Duo, Balthazar told himself, his heart still pounding rapidly as they huddled together and approached.

“--a mannequin...” Balthazar laughed breathlessly as they stared. The lifesize figure was clearly made of several ball-jointed parts, with, just for good measure, a false Valentine's Day-shaped heart set high on the left side of its chest.

“John...” Seven murmured.

“Friend of yours?” Balthazar couldn’t help himself. Seven chuckled and tapped a slim box attached to the side of the table. On the left was a slip of paper with the name “John” handwritten on it.

“At least it’s not a body...” Quatre rubbed her arm up and down, but she didn’t seem frightened anymore.

“No,” Balthazar agreed, “but I could kill him for about doing _me_ in.”

“Do you always get funny when you’re scared?” asked Seven. Balthazar shot him a look, and he raised his hands innocently, moving away to a nearby table.

Balthazar took one more long, deep breath, and joined him.

The table was arrayed with criminally rusty surgical tools.

Right next to it was a wooden stand with another, different medical mannequin on top. It was only a bust, with half of its face and the front of its chest “uncovered,” as it were, to show off its insides.

Its right lung, Balthazar noted on closer inspection, seemed to be loose compared to the other organs.

“Is there something we can use to pull this out?” he asked Seven.

“I don’t think any of these can be used at all,” Seven answered, “except this.”

He offered Balthazar a scalpel that, while stained with something eerily blood-like, was not rusted.

“I wouldn’t bother,” said Seven as Balthazar moved to wedge the lung out. “You’ll just cut it.”

He pointed across the room, past the “John” mannequin. “Looks like there are more tools over there.”

Seven was right, but the tools slipped Balthazar’s mind entirely as he approached. Next to the second table was a very large object, roughly the size and shape of John’s operating table, draped in a white sheet.

Quatre, standing next to it, looked up at Balthazar.

“Do you think this one’s a real dead body?”

He couldn’t say, and wouldn’t try, not with her sister still unaccounted for. Very, _very_ slowly, they tugged the sheet off...

Balthazar cleared his throat and forced a chuckle. A mannequin head and left arm, different from John, lay on the table.

“Lucy,” Quatre read off its nameplate. “I guess...we need to put her together.”

“I suppose stealing from John would be cheating,” Balthazar pursed his lips and shrugged. “Ah, look-”

Directly behind them, in front of a shelf stocked end-to-end with medicines, was a bench with a mannequin torso perched neatly on top of it.

“Her heart is missing,” Quatre noted sadly as Balthazar laid it on the table. He opened his mouth, but opted not to be “funny” for the moment.

“I didn’t realize they could come apart,” he said. “We may be looking for more pieces than we thought.”

Leaving Quatre with Lucy, Balthazar finally searched the tools Seven had pointed out to him. The table was crammed full, but again, only one object seemed less than ancient. Balthazar held it up to the light, as though the name would suddenly dawn on him.

“Kocher forceps,” Seven nearly made him jump. “They can hold blood vessels shut or tissue out of the way in surgery.”

“Or extract a loose lung?”

“Good luck,” Seven patted his shoulder encouragingly.

“All right...” Balthazar murmured, rubbery lung safely in hand, “then what is the scalpel for?”

Seven took the organ from him, turning it over and prodding it with his thumbs.

“Feel here,” he tapped one particular spot, handing it back to Balthazar. “I never said we _weren’t_ meant to cut it...eventually.”

Carefully, Balthazar drew the scalpel across the lung. Inside was a small, and very shiny, silver key.

“Follow me,” said Seven after a glance at it. He lead Balthazar around the partition, towards the doors they had entered from.

There was a second, single door to its left.

“This one,” Seven told him, raising his arm and pointing to the other side of the room, “and that one are both locked.”

“Ah, but now...” Balthazar twisted the key in the lock with a satisfying _*click*._

It did not, as he had hoped, lead to the exit, but to a chemical closet stacked on all walls with books and bottles.

A table in its center held a large, green box, a stiff card, and two bottles that were clearly not medical. Balthazar untwisted the caps and gingerly upturned the bottles over them to check their contents.

“Paint?” Balthazar wrinkled his nose at the thick red and blue liquids.

“Blood, and...” Seven mulled it over, “extraterrestrial blood.”

“...naturally.”

A very small electronic lock was attached to the box, with a display only large enough for three characters. Seven read aloud from the instruction card.

“Iron = 1, Salt = 2, Water = 3, Carbon Dioxide = ?, Ammonia = ?, Ethanol = ?”

“It’s the number of molecules...” The door creaked slowly as Quatre made her way inside. “Carbon dioxide would also be three.”

“Because it’s CO2, right, of course,” Balthazar nodded gratefully. “Do you know the others?”

Quatre paused, then shook her head.

“No matter,” Balthazar went on. “We’ll each take a wall and find the answers ourselves, yes?”

The back wall was shorter than those on the sides, and Quatre searched it alone as Balthazar and Seven split the other two by height.

“This--” Quatre held out a bottle, her nose deeply wrinkled. “This is definitely ammonia; NH3. ...or ‘4’, I guess.”

Not a minute later she stopped them again.

“Here’s the other one, ethanol: C2H5OH.”

Balthazar counted quickly. “...’9’, in other words. Right, and now...”

They gathered once more in front of the box, although Balthazar wasn’t entirely sure they’d gotten much useful information.

“We’ve got six numbers here, but three, max, will fit in this lock.”

“Try the new ones first, then,” Seven shrugged.

Having no better ideas, Balthazar hit the keys in the order they’d appeared on the card.

He had not imagined the box was large enough to hold a human arm, even a false one, but there it was, along with Lucy’s missing heart.

“That’s not good for the heart,” Balthazar lifted it gingerly out of the box, as though it might bleed on him.

“There you go again,” Seven chuckled.

Frowning, mainly at himself, Balthazar tucked the right arm under his own and made for the exit. Quatre opened the door as he approached, but didn’t move, staring past him.

Seven was not following them, but rather examining something in his hands, his back to the door.

“What did you find?” Quatre asked. For a moment, Seven didn’t answer, then he turned and tossed a small object to her gently.

“Ethylene Diamine Tartrate,” read the label.

“It’s EDT, an industrial cleaner,” said Seven.

“Do we need it to clean something?” Quatre asked him.

“Well, it’s already cleaned up my brain a little bit,” Seven answered casually, as though he were making sense.

Strangely, Quatre seemed to understand him. “Your memory’s come back?”

“Not all of it,” Seven admitted, “but I remembered an...interesting story about EDT.”

“--hold on, hold on,” Balthazar cut in, awkwardly shuffling the bundle under his arm. He laid the mannequin pieces back on the table and looked over at Quatre and Seven suspiciously. “‘Memory’s come back’?”

They looked at him oddly for a second before Seven seemed to realize.

“Right, you weren’t there yet,” he said. “Like I told everyone else when we first met, I can’t remember a goddamn thing from before I woke up here. I still don’t...at least about myself.”

“...right,” Balthazar was utterly unconvinced, but did not feel it wise to argue. He did his best to look at least willing to accept the story. “Er, go on then.”

Seven didn’t seem to care one way or the other, and simply continued.

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CVU5QVk5tOG1vTHM)

“About 50 years ago, a new factory started up to make EDT crystals, for industrial cleaning, like I told you. Only a year later, though, they had to shut down entirely.

“See, their EDT crystals had attracted water molecules, turning them into something called a ‘hydrate’, a sort of mutation of the original structure - and completely useless as a cleaner, by the way.

“No matter what they did, they couldn’t prevent their crystals from becoming hydrates, something that was unheard of even in decades of EDT research. They had no choice but to stop and close up shop.

“Except it didn’t end there. After that, EDT crystals all over the country, all over the globe, began to mutate. None of these other factories were in any way connected with the original, but it was the same story everywhere: pure EDT crystals suddenly became a thing of the past.

“In fact...” Seven paused, taking a moment to think, “last I checked, no one since has been able to create a pure EDT crystal. They’ve basically vanished off the face of the earth.”

“But did they ever figure out what was causing it?” Quatre asked, staring up at Seven.

“Never,” he answered, “it was just as though...”

He gestured vaguely, looking for the words.

“...as though the crystals were communicating with each other through some means, invisible to the human eye,” Balthazar finished.

“Yeah,” Seven turned to him. “You know the story?”

“No,” said Balthazar, “but I heard one just like it behind Door 4.”

As best he could, he told them the story he’d heard from Cass in the freezer, about the crystallization of glycerin and ice-9, the water that would freeze at 96ºF.

“Ice that doesn’t melt at room temperature...” Seven rubbed his head. As he’d listened, he’d gotten a faraway look in his eyes, and was now frowning deeply in frustration.

“You remember something else?” Quatre asked him again.

“Almost, I...” Seven’s head snapped up, his eyes wide. “--that woman! She’s here on this ship!”

Startled, Balthazar pressed. “Who’s here?!”

Could he mean...Zero?

“You don’t know?” Seven seemed surprised. “Alice, the woman who won’t melt at room temperature.”

“I... actually, I _did_ hear something like that,” Balthazar admitted. “She was a mummy on the _Titanic,_ wasn’t she? But what do you mean she’s on _this_ ship?”

“You must know about the ship that picked up the bodies after the _Titanic_ sank,” Seven started, answering himself for Quatre’s benefit. “Two days after the disaster, the CS _Mackay-Bennett_ sailed out of Halifax, in Canada, to collect the corpses. ...the first class ones, anyway.”

He paused briefly for his audience to chuckle.

“But they pulled something else out of the water, too.”

“A beautiful, wooden coffin, and I do mean _all_ wood. There were no nails to hold it together, it was so perfectly crafted. When no one claimed it, they decided to break it open.”

“Inside was a dead body like all the others, although they didn’t even realize it at first. The woman inside, the ‘mummy’ that had been brought aboard, was so lifelike she seemed to just be sleeping.

“Of course, the waters out there in the North Atlantic were freezing, so they assumed she’d rot eventually back on shore, but it never happened. Weeks, months passed, but even by summertime she stayed just as completely frozen as she’d ever been.

“The newspapers of the day started to call her ‘All-ice’.”

“Alice.”

Seven paused for dramatic effect. “And then...she disappeared. She was stolen, coffin and all.”

“And made her way to another cruise liner,” Balthazar blinked, slowly taking it all in. Seven, even Quatre, laughed at his “funny” commentary, and Balthazar blushed irritably.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Seven continued. “See, there was a thriving underground market in New York at the time - I mean a _particular_ one: all millionaires, from all over the world.”

“The story goes, Alice was bought there that summer by an Englishman, Lord Gordain.”

“Lord... The one who bought the _Gigantic?”_

“The one who _would_ buy the _Gigantic,_ four years later,” Seven corrected him. “Before he died, in 1931, a friend asked him, ‘Where is Alice?’ Gordain had never told a soul, but right there, he said to his friend...

 

_“Alice sleeps in a small chamber past the forest of knowledge, beneath the navel of the_ Gigantic.”

 

“...forest of knowledge...” Balthazar murmured in the silence. “Does this ship have a library?”

“Hell if I know,” suddenly casual, Seven brushed past him, reaching for the door. “Sounds like something to ask June, don’t you think?”

_True enough,_ Balthazar thought, a little prickly at the reminder he and Cass had been forced to separate.

“So Lord Gordain owned this ship, _and...”_ Quatre started and trailed off.

_"-and_ the world’s greatest Halloween prop,” Balthazar finished. “If you believe the rumour.”

“Yeah...” Slowly, Quatre followed Seven’s path out the door. Balthazar grabbed the mannequin parts once again and headed out himself.

Seven waved him over from the far side of the room, past the partitioned middle.

“Still have that organ key?” he asked.

“Yes, but only two hands,” Balthazar hurriedly left the arm and heart with Lucy and returned to Seven, unlocking the door to the “Preparation Room,” according to its plaque.

On the wall to their right from the entrance was another door, also locked but unaccepting of the key Balthazar had. He knelt, inspecting the gold plate around the keyhole.

“An astrological symbol...”

Seven joined him, but immediately stood up again.

“Jupiter,” he announced, “same as the door at the end of the long hall, the one pointed directly at the central stairs.”

“In other words, our ticket back there is in here someplace.”

“Or we’re trapped in here,” Seven chuckled dryly and patted Balthazar’s shoulder.

“And you think _I_ get ‘funny’ when I’m frightened,” Balthazar smirked at him.

“I’m funny all the time,” Seven answered, examining a dresser near the door. “...oh?”

Inside the dresser drawer was a clipboard bearing a medical chart with a pair of familiar names.

“Looks like we might have to trade with John after all,” Seven observed, “if Lucy’s weight doesn’t match the chart after she’s put together.”

“We started with her head and left arm...” Balthazar thought it out, “and we’ve found her heart, chest, and right arm so far.”

“Just a torso and two legs left,” Seven left the chart on the dresser and turned his attention to the rest of the room.

It was quite sparse. Apart from a row of lovely wood and porcelain sinks there was only a tall, three-door cupboard, and a little table with a beaker, switch-on light, and...

...a strange, squarish wood device set across from the light, on the opposite side of the beaker, with a circular panel in its center and four, small, square coloured lights on the side: white, red, blue, and purple from top to bottom, none of which were lit.

Balthazar hit the big light, and the white button lit up in response, although it seemed to have no effect on anything.

“Those other lights are the same colours as the lockers,” Seven pointed out, gesturing to the tall cupboard beside them. Each of its three doors was mounted with a coloured panel: red, blue, and purple.

“Here,” Seven reached into his suit jacket and pulled out the large bottles they’d found in the chemical closet. “Our blood.”

“Tch,” Seven’s point obvious, Balthazar slowly poured the red liquid into the beaker and hit the light again.

There was a loud _*click*_ from their right as the red button lit up. Seven grabbed the red-panelled door and pulled it open.

“Three doors, three missing pieces,” he muttered, pulling out the single leg. “All right, next.”

On a hunch, Balthazar did not remove the red liquid, but added the blue instead.

_*click*_

“Good thinking,” said Seven, opening the purple door,

and removing a torso.

Balthazar emptied the hybrid mixture into the sink, and finally poured in just the blue liquid.

“That’s everything we were missing, right?” Balthazar stood up, dusting off his knees and hefting the torso. “Two legs and the body?”

“According to the chart.” With a leg over each shoulder like a pair of skis, Seven, followed by Balthazar, marched back out to the operating room where Quatre was waiting for them. She made way for them in front of Lucy’s table, and in a few minutes, piece by piece, they had put her together.

“...aaaand, nothing,” Balthazar sighed. Assembling both mannequins had had no apparent effect on the room.

“Of course not,” Seven tapped the scale. “The numbers are wrong.”

“Numbers?” Quatre looked at them inquisitively, and Seven handed her the medical chart from the preparation room. She examined it closely, then walked over to John’s table to compare his scale.

She returned with a reassuringly certain look.

“All of them,” she said. “Other than the heart, and the head and left arm that were already here, we have to switch all the pieces to make it work.”

Balthazar stared for a moment, then laughed. “In other words, we weren’t collecting _Lucy’s_ parts, but John’s. We _should_ have stolen from him in the first place!”

For a split-second, Quatre seemed to smile.

 

* * *

 

Balthazar wiped his brow and peered at the scale in front of Lucy’s table.

“53.2kg, just like it says,” he murmured, proud and slightly breathless. From John’s table, Seven waved them over excitedly.

A flat drawer had sprung out of the middle of John’s scale, and inside was just the key they needed.

“Is that...to get out of here?” Quatre asked. “Wasn’t that the symbol down the long hallway?”

“Yes, _and_ on our exit door,” Balthazar assured her, sharing a nod with Seven. “Let’s move. There’s probably another puzzle room before we meet the others again.”

“Sad but true,” Seven agreed. Key in hand, he led the way back to the prep room.

“Wait, hang on-” Balthazar stopped him with a hand on his elbow. For whatever reason, Quatre had not followed them, nor could they hear her footsteps on the way.

Seven shrugged. “Will you go get her or should I?”

Balthazar reached out to take the key, then stopped.

“...I’ll go,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Just wait here.”

He walked quietly, and paused before rounding the partition to reach into his jacket.

It had completely slipped his mind until that moment, but he was still carrying the four-leaf clover bookmark Santa had foisted on him in the 2nd class cabin.

[♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CSm9lX1hKOUFkM2s)

Quatre was exactly where they’d left her, staring down at John, loosely holding her arms. She turned when Balthazar touched her shoulder, taking the bookmark when he offered it.

“Where...did you get this?” She sounded more stunned than he’d expected.

“Behind Door 4,” he said. “It was a gift.”

She looked up at him, blinking slowly. Balthazar cleared his throat and continued.

“Did you know that each of the leaves has a separate meaning?” he thought back to what Santa had told him. “Hope, faith, love, and luck.”

Balthazar paused, looking down as he thought, then raising his eyes to meet Quatre’s.

“I...can only imagine how I’d feel if June had gone missing. I’m so sorry, but...please, try not to lose hope. As long as you can hold onto your love for your sister and your faith that she’s all right, I’m sure it will bring you good luck.”

Suddenly flushed, Balthazar fell silent. He wasn’t quite sure where that sappy little number had come from, or why he would say such a thing out loud, but Quatre stared at him as though in shock, blinking back tears when she finally looked away. Clutching the bookmark tightly, she stepped around the table, pacing a few steps back and forth in thought.

Suddenly, she came back, leaning in close to Balthazar and watching him carefully.

“Can I ask you something?” she tilted her head cautiously as she spoke.

“...yes, of course,” startled, Balthazar blinked at her, almost leaning away.

“What’s the _first_ thing that comes to mind when you hear the word...” she paused, “...’experiment’?”

“Er...” Balthazar thought it over as quickly as he could, shrugging. “Vaguely sinister medical practice, I suppose?”

“So...nothing _specific?”_ Possibly disappointed, Quatre took a step back, although her eyes did not leave Balthazar’s face.

“No,” he answered, shaking his head. “...I’m sorry. ...what did you have in mind?”

“Nothing,” said Quatre, far too quickly. “It was just a coincidence, I guess.”

“Are you sure?” Balthazar lowered his voice. “If it's important, maybe I...” he gestured vaguely, still feeling embarrassed.

Quatre frowned, scrutinizing him for a moment longer, then seemed to relax, if only slightly. She stretched her arm out, gesturing to the mannequin.

“...okay, let me ask you this,” tucking the bookmark into her pocket, she leaned on the operating table. “Is this John? Or is it Lucy?”

“How do you mean?” Balthazar crossed his arms and leaned back against the table’s edge.

“Have you ever heard the Locke’s Socks paradox?” she asked. “Or the Ship of Theseus?”

“No, never,” he answered cheerily. “But I do love a good thought experiment.”

“All right, say you have a favourite pair of socks, your _lucky_ socks,” said Quatre. “You couldn’t do without them. What would you do if one of them got a hole?”

“Patch it up, post haste.”

Quatre nodded approvingly, and continued. “But what if they keep tearing? Until you’ve put so many patches on them that none of the original fabric is left?”

“Ahh...” Balthazar nodded once, slowly. “I see: are they really still _my_ socks if they’re made with all new material?”

“Right.”

“And the Ship of Theseus?”

“Is similar,” said Quatre, “but takes it one step further. Say you repaired a wooden ship by replacing it, piece-by-piece, with new parts. Then say you built an entirely new ship out of the _old_ parts. Which one is really the original?”

“I suppose...the one I’ve been using this whole time, even with the new parts. Like John here...” Balthazar turned, leaning on his hands on the table, “he still has his own head and heart - and left arm - even if all the other parts were Lucy’s. If he still has the same brain, then he must have the same _mind,_ so I would say it’s John after all.”

“Then again...” he glanced up at Quatre, who seemed pleased by his answer, “over the years, we’ve imagined the mind - or the soul, if you like - to be in any number of organs, so...”

Balthazar shrugged and fell silent, assuming Quatre would have a solution of her own to offer.

“You know that our cells...” she started slowly, “die and regenerate every single day, though...right? Every few years...we’re like whole new people. How separate are we, really, when we’re all made of what we’ve eaten and absorbed, when we just keep rotating?”

“Remember Seven’s story about EDT?” she looked up at him, deadly serious. “Or June’s, about glycerin? Communicating through an unseen mechanism? We’re all connected, and not just physically--...”

Her eyes fell back onto John’s face, and when she lifted them again she looked shaken, her face drained of colour.

“There was this experiment,” she said, very quietly, “nine years ago-”

                       “A _hem--”_

__

A loud, awkward cough echoed out from behind the partition screen, and a moment later, Seven appeared, casually patting his chest.

“Oh, excuse me,” he said. “Must be something I ate.”

“Your tact is much appreciated.” Balthazar mostly meant it honestly.

“Just wanted to make sure you kids were all right.” For all his jesting, Seven was clearly concerned for Quatre and her ashen appearance.

“We’re fine,” she insisted. “We’ll be right there.”

“Sure,” Seven was kind enough to nod and walk away once more, leaving Balthazar to wonder how long, indeed, they had been talking.

He looked over at Quatre, but she didn’t seem ready to continue. Just as Balthazar moved away however, she called out to him one more time.

“Thank you...” she said softly, patting her jacket with the clover bookmark inside, “but...”

Balthazar took a step closer and gently tilted his head.

“...I think...my sister might be dead...” she looked away, her voice barely audible. “...and if she is...then I’m next.”

Balthazar felt a chill down his spine. Quatre sounded so certain, he had no idea what to say.

But...

He did know what Castiel would say, what he would want Balthazar to tell her.

“I won’t let that happen,” he said, as firmly as he could.

Quatre looked up, and quickly wiped her eyes with her jacket sleeve. She nodded, then finally moved past him, heading for the exit door.

 

           “...thank you.”

Seven was leaning against the open door with an easy smile, nodding at them both as they arrived and passed through it.

After a pair of turns they found themselves in a hall that split in two directions. Right was clearly a dead end, but to the left were two sets of doors and another turn.

The first set of doors would not yield, and the promising right turn was, in fact, another dead end. Balthazar grabbed hold of the second door and made to pull, when--

                       “--Balthazar!?”

\--he jumped and spun around at the familiar voice. Castiel - with Santa and Lotus - came barreling down the hall from the very far end, panicked and panting.

“June!” Balthazar ran to him and gripped his shoulders. “What happened?!”

“We set the room on fire--” Cass blurted out between gulps of clean air. “--but we’re okay--!”

Balthazar gaped at him, then peered over his shoulder toward the door Cass had run out of. There was no trace of a fire...at least, not that he could see.

Santa, now breathing more or less normally, broke in, waving a hand.

“What are you all even doing here?” she asked. “We’ve only been through one room so far-- There aren’t even any numbered doors here?”

                       “Hey, everyone?”

No one had an answer, but Quatre, back around the corner, had clearly found something. She pointed them to an image on the wall...

A map of C Deck.

“Okay, look-” Quatre dragged her finger along the map as she spoke. “If this is Door 7...”

“...and this is Door 8...”

“...then our only other option...”

They gathered in front of the door by the corner, their only way forward.

“But, um...wasn’t this door locked earlier?” Santa touched it hesitantly, looking at the others and getting only confusion in return. She tugged at the handle, and the door creaked open an inch.

Hardly enthusiastic, they pulled it open the rest of the way...

...and found themselves back in a _very_ familiar room.

 

* * *

 

[♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CcUp3cWo4ek5tNzQ)

“I see...” Ace sighed deeply and dragged a hand over his face. “So you went through the laboratory and the operating room, and then came right back here.”

He chuckled, somewhat groggily. “I feel a little silly over my grand gesture. I didn’t think I’d be ‘rescued’ quite so soon.”

With a groan, he pushed himself to his feet and clapped his hands together, an amiable smile back on his face.

“Where to next, then?”

“I’m not sure...” said Lotus uneasily, reaching into her pocket.

“We found this,” she explained, holding out the Earth key, “but if we can’t get back to the central stairs...”

“Not so fast,” Seven, too, reached into his suit jacket for a key.

“Jupiter was the symbol at the end of the long hall, so here we go.”

The mood in the room lifted noticeably.

“Don’t forget the Saturn keycard for the elevators,” added Cass.

“Now we have two doors to open by the grand stairs.”

“Let’s get moving,” said Santa, leading the way. “We don’t even know how much time we’ve lost.”

They made for the exit -

                       _*SLAM!*_

\- only to be startled by a metallic crash behind them.

Quatre was seething, her eyes tearing up. She jerked her arm behind her, pointing at Door 3.

“Where the _fuck_ are you going?!” she yelled, absolutely furious. “You _promised_ me my sister was behind one of these doors! _Well?!”_

They all shifted guiltily on their heels. Balthazar felt quite ashamed. He had just been reassuring Quatre about her sister, only to forget her at the first sign forward.

“You’re absolutely right,” Ace stepped forward first, raising his hands. “We can’t leave Door 3 unexplored. And now that I’ve had a nice, long rest, it’s about time I did my share. Seven...”

He turned to the rest of the group. “...would you be so kind?”

1 + 4 + 7 = 12

1 + 2 = 3

“...Right,” Seven nodded after a moment’s thought and slowly made his way toward the numbered door.

Quatre wiped her eyes with her jacket sleeve, still trembling angrily, and followed. The hastily assembled Team 3 scanned their bracelets and disappeared through the door.

“Well, as you were saying,” Lotus watched them go, then turned to Santa, “let’s get moving. We might find something useful behind those doors before the others get back.”

Conscious of their time limit, they jogged down the long hall full of doors until they reached the end, where Seven had found the Jupiter keyhole...

...and emerged exactly where he had predicted they would.

“All right, I say we split up here,” Lotus announced, holding the Saturn keycard out to Balthazar. “You and June can take the elevators; Santa and I will take the stairs.”

Without knowing what lay ahead, they set a 20-minute limit on their initial search. As Santa and Lotus disappeared up to A Deck, Balthazar and Cass turned to the elevators they had found so many hours ago.

In a single motion, Balthazar slid the card through the reader, pulled the lever, and hit the call button. A motor began to whir from far below them, and in less than a minute, the doors pulled open.

“Wait!” Cass grabbed Balthazar’s arm, pulling him back from the door.

“W-what’s wrong?”

Cass had not protested until this moment, yet he seemed surprised at Balthazar’s confusion.

“This elevator only goes _down,”_ he insisted. “That’s what’s wrong.”

It took Balthazar a moment to catch on, and a sudden chill passed through him.

They were on C Deck, with everything below them completely submerged...

...yet the elevators only went down.

Balthazar took a half-step forward, leaning over the threshold of the elevator doors and scrutinizing every inch.

“It’s totally dry inside...” he murmured.

“So?” Cass was clearly still ahead. “That just means the shaft is watertight.”

“True, but...” Balthazar rubbed his chin, “if we’re _meant_ to go further down...then perhaps it’s not ‘everything below C Deck’ that’s underwater...”

“--but _only_ D Deck?” Cass eyed the elevator suspiciously. “I mean, I guess so, but...”

“I’ve got it!” Balthazar reached around the lift door. There were only two buttons, C and E, and he hit the latter, quickly moving back outside as the doors closed.

“This way we’ll _know_ the doors opened down there,” he said quietly, as he and Cass pressed their ears to the grate. They heard a faint _*ping*,_ and the unmistakable sound of the doors grinding open.

Castiel hit the call button again, and they leapt out of the way as the lift returned...just in case.

“...It’s bone dry,” Balthazar observed, craning his neck to peer inside. Cass frowned deeply at it nonetheless.

“Why don’t you stay here?” Balthazar offered, touching Cass’ arm. “Worse comes to worst, you can avenge my death.”

Cass looked rather appalled.

“Why don’t _you_ stay here?” he countered, tilting his head with a smirk. “At least I’d be buried on an _Olympic-_ class ocean liner.”

“Fair enough,” Balthazar conceded with a smile as he stepped onto the lift. Cass followed quickly, and hit the button.

“You know,” he murmured thoughtfully as the doors closed, “if the shaft _is_ watertight, then it must be airtight, too.”

Balthazar’s stomach did a small, determined flip.

The two-deck ride seemed interminably long as he considered any possible way they might have been tricked into drowning themselves. His hand twitched nervously, but Castiel took it and held on tight.

The doors slid open.

There was no flood, and yet they hesitated, peeking around the corner as though the seawater might be lying in wait.

Finally, they exhaled.

“You see?” Balthazar chuckled breathlessly as they slowly emerged onto E Deck. “Not a drop of water in sight.”

“No, there’s plenty of water,” Cass corrected him, slowly raising his eyes and pointing to the ceiling, “...riiiight above our heads.”

“Tell me something,” slightly flushed, Balthazar smiled at him, “is this you in a _good,_ or a bad mood?”

Castiel smiled sweetly back, but declined to answer.

The way to their left was blocked by a massive grate like that on B Deck, the kind that would not be moved. Balthazar poked his head around the corner to their right.

A long hall stretched out beyond, but with a clear, and very telling, end in view. Balthazar and Cass jogged forward quickly. They could see the number 6 painted on the door ahead, but after the broken REDs in the hospital room, they had to be certain they could proceed.

They breathed a long sigh of relief as they pulled up in front of the blessedly functional device.

“I guess this time we’ll be split up onto different floors,” Cass observed. “Unless Santa and Lotus somehow got down here from the door on A Deck.”

“Maybe we can check for ourselves.” Something had caught Balthazar’s eye as he turned to Cass. There was another framed map on the wall by Door 6, but as they approached, Balthazar could see that a large chunk had been burned away.

Gingerly, they tugged it out of the frame. Cass pointed to one spot.

“I _think_ this is us right now,” he said, “but I have no idea what other routes there are.”

“We only get one deck per map,” Balthazar grumbled. With considerable effort, he folded it just enough to fit into his jacket and followed Cass back towards the elevator.

“June, hang on-” he touched Cass’ arm, slowing them down.

“Hm?”

“Your fever,” Balthazar lowered his voice, “did it come back while we were separated?”

“--oh...” Cass seemed to have almost forgotten, surely a good sign. “No, it didn’t. I’m fine, really.”

“And you didn’t get _hurt_ in that fire you-- er, set?” Balthazar tilted his head back and forth, checking Cass over for burns, which seemed to amuse him.

“No, I’m fine, _really,”_ he insisted again, smiling. “It was part of the puzzle, honest. I’m sure some automated system will take care of it. ...or the seawater.”

“Too right,” Balthazar laughed softly with relief, and they hurried on.

 

* * *

 

“Door 1 is on A Deck...” Balthazar mused as the four players made their way back down the long hall on C Deck. “Then we’re only missing Doors 2 and 9.”

“I suspect something past Door 3 will lead us to 2,” said Lotus, “leaving _only_ 9.”

“Right...”

They were getting closer to the end. If Duo was not found, Balthazar knew - no, even if she was, they were rapidly headed for disaster.

           Who, indeed, would be left behind?

To their surprise, as they hadn’t been gone long, Team 3 was already waiting for them in the central hospital room. Quatre and Ace were hunched over on two beds, while Seven shifted slowly from foot to foot, his head hanging low.

They barely looked up as the other four entered.

“You...didn’t find her?” Santa asked hesitantly, as though worried the answer might be worse.

Indeed, from their silence, that seemed to be just the case.

“Duo is...” Ace began, then stopped, covering his face with one hand.

“Duo is dead,” Seven finished for him, “just like Number Nine.”

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CLWpSQWNUNC1ZWjQ)

_"Just_ like--” Santa’s eyes went wide. All four of them were frozen. Balthazar bit his lip, forcing himself to breathe.

“I propped the exit doors open,” Seven went on, jerking his thumb back toward the numberless door. “Just in case.”

_"Why_ would--?!” Lotus sounded appalled, stopping short as Balthazar walked past her. When Cass and Santa followed, she hesitated, but joined them nonetheless.

Balthazar stopped them just outside the door.

“No, June, you should stay here,” he insisted. “Please.”

Cass glared at the suggestion, and Balthazar could not protest.

Back in the familiar hall, they spotted the Door 3 exit quick enough, stoppered as it was with the handle of a broom.

Balthazar’s stomach lurched as they entered; the smell was unmistakable. They shuddered, huddled together, and slowly followed the bloodstains around a partition.

“--oh-- _god--”_ Lotus clapped a hand over her mouth. Balthazar could not breathe at all, gripping the edge of the partition as his head swam.

What was left of the corpse could only be Duo. Unlike Number Nine, her bracelet had broken on impact, the cracked screen showing no number, but even beneath the sea of blood they could make out patches of her blonde hair and white sundress, gleaming white like the bones of her ribs and left arm still visible under the red.

Balthazar was the last to turn away, his mouth dry as sand and the silence roaring in his ears. He approached Cass, leaning against a wall and hugging his stomach, and touched his arm. Cass wrapped his arms tightly around Balthazar’s neck, and Balthazar held him close.

 

* * *

 

“It’s obvious Duo was murdered,” said Seven, pacing slowly among the beds. “Not hard to figure out how they did it, either.

“First, the killers had her authenticate at the RED, but then they pushed her in alone. Once the nine seconds were up and the door closed, it was over, but she didn’t give up.

“Duo managed to find the DEAD inside the shower room; it’s not like she had anything to lose by trying. But after 81 seconds...”

Everyone stared at the floor, a long, metallic groan from deep within the ship sounding out around them. Cass shivered, his head resting on Balthazar’s shoulder, and Balthazar rubbed his arm reassuringly.

“‘Killers’, right...” Santa spoke up, “because you need at least three people to authenticate.”

“Exactly,” Seven confirmed. “We’re looking at two perpetrators here, minimum. And if it happened while we were looking for the missing RED hardware...then none of us have alibis.”

Balthazar attempted to run the numbers in his head, to see who could’ve opened Door 3 with Duo, but he couldn’t focus, his thoughts disappearing into a haze.

“Seven, please...” Ace insisted softly, “we have nothing to gain by being suspicious of each other right now.”

“Nothing to gain?” Seven raised an eyebrow lazily. “We have a murder to solve.”

“But that’s only what Zero _wants_ us to do,” Ace swept his arm around, gesturing at the others. “You all remember Zero? The one who set up this game? Any game has a winner and a loser, and this is Zero’s attempt at making us fight _for_ that victory. We cannot let that happen, do you understand?”

Balthazar slowly looked up to find Santa already returning his gaze. She gave him the smallest of nods.

 

_“If it_ **_was_ ** _Zero, why did they remove the hardware in the first place, though?”_

_“If I’m right, then...it could only mean Duo’s disappearance was planned.”_

 

Perhaps they had been right after all.

“If that’s true,” Balthazar spoke up, “then you’re suggesting Zero is still on this ship with us.”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Ace looked at him, his eyebrows raised. “There were clues from the start. Remember Zero’s speech by the grand stairs? ‘I am Zero...the captain of this ship.’ Always _‘this_ ship’, not _‘the’_. Why? if not as a hint?”

Balthazar mulled it over quietly. A long moment passed, until the silence was broken by a voice they had not heard in quite some time.

 

                       “I think... Zero is one of us.”

 

Quatre did not look up as she spoke, her voice faint. The metal beds creaked loudly as everyone shifted, stunned.

“That certainly makes more sense than them merely observing us,” Balthazar wasn’t sure why he was so quick to agree; perhaps he still felt guilty about nearly leaving Door 3 unchecked. He glanced over at Quatre, who was watching him carefully.

“Balthazar...” Cass lifted his head, but Balthazar went on.

“Think about it,” he insisted, “think about the puzzles, or the bracelets. Everything here runs by itself. The bombs go off by themselves. Zero doesn’t _need_ to be watching us from afar.”

“Or perhaps it’s only meant to look that way,” said Ace.

“And what the hell would their motive be?” asked Lotus angrily. “Zero’s risking their life if they’re a player!”

“I don’t know,” Balthazar snapped, “and I don’t care. I’m just saying it’s _possible,_ and it certainly fits with Ace’s theory that Zero is the killer...or one of them.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Ace suddenly changed tacks, holding a hand up placatingly. “It _is_ possible, but please, Balthazar--” he softened his voice, “...Quatre, we _must_ let it go for now. Until we’ve escaped this ship, we cannot fall prey to suspicion amongst ourselves. We have to work together until then, surely...you understand?”

Balthazar and Quatre glanced at each other, but did not answer. Balthazar shrugged, and Quatre looked away.

Castiel laid his arm across Balthazar’s shoulders and met his eyes as though to ask, _“are you all right?”_ Balthazar nodded in response.

They all raised their heads as the clock in the grand hall began to chime.

 

1...

                                                        2...

3...

 

“We only have three hours left,” Lotus quickly pushed herself to her feet and stepped over to Quatre, helping her stand and looking back at the others. “We need to move.”


	5. Door 1

“All right, let’s open these up.”

Balthazar knelt on the floor in front of seven folded slips of paper. They had been torn from his notebook, and each one contained a code name and a number.

In order to expedite their way forward, they had decided to vote on choice of doors, agreeing to divide into teams based on majority.

The options were as follows:

Door 1, which Santa and Lotus had found behind the Earth door on A Deck.

Door 6, as discovered by Balthazar and Castiel on E Deck.

And Door 2, all the way down on the ship’s bottom deck.

As Lotus had suspected, one more key had been found, behind Door 3: a card with the symbol of Mercury on its front.

As the Mercury-emblazoned elevators on C Deck only went down, Balthazar and Castiel had been assigned the exploration, via the “logic” that they had already gone below.

Only two buttons had been available: C and Bottom. With a grim salute to the others, Balthazar had watched the doors shut in front of him.

As before, on E Deck, the only way forward was a hallway to their right, ending in a numbered door.

“So, that’s it,” Cass had sounded almost nervous. “We’ve found every door except 9. It’s _got_ to be next.”

“Yes...” Balthazar had agreed uneasily, “but which of the three is it behind?”

 

* * *

 

Balthazar picked up the first slip of paper and unfolded it.

“Ace...” he read out loudly, “wants Door 1.”

“That’s right,” Ace nodded to him. “Should I explain why?”

“No, we don’t have time,” Balthazar shook his head and moved on. “Lotus...wants Door 2.”

“Yes.”

“Seven...also Door 2.”

“We’re in the lead,” Seven chuckled dryly.

“Quatre...wants Door 1,” Balthazar hurried through the rest. “June...wants Door 6, and...Santa, also 6. And last but not least...”

The voting had been Balthazar’s idea, and he had a plan.

A tiny pencil mark set his slip apart from the rest, and tucked into each of his jacket sleeves was another with a different door than the one he’d thrown in. He had to know how the others were voting before he made his choice.

“I want Door 1,” he announced, holding up his slip.

“Let me see that-” Santa narrowed her eyes at him and thrust out her hand.

“Sure?” Balthazar did his best to look startled as he turned it over. “...what is it?”

Santa scrutinized the paper for a moment, then shrugged, tossing it aside. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“At any rate,” Ace pressed on, “we’ve decided who will go through Door 1.”

1 + 4 + 5 = 10

1 + 0 = 1

“But neither of the other teams work,” Cass sighed.

“Sure they do,” Lotus waved her hand. “Seven, we’re going through Door 6, all right?”

3 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 24

2 + 4 = 6

“Fine by me,” Seven agreed. “I had no real reason for picking Door 2.”

 

* * *

 

For the second time, Balthazar and Castiel would have to part. The first time hadn’t stung so much, knowing they would see each other again soon enough.

This time, it was clear both felt apprehensive. More likely than not, one team would find Door 9. Who’s to say they would come back?

Even so, Balthazar had made his choice.

The teams parted at the central stairs, Balthazar, Quatre, and Ace making the climb to A Deck and the Earth door.

Just as Santa and Lotus had reported, a narrow hallway led to single, metal door. Wordlessly, all three scanned their bracelets at the RED, and leapt through when Ace pulled the lever.

The room beyond would have been cozy if not for the countdown sounding out from Balthazar’s wrist.

“Where is it?!” he yelled.

“Behind you!” Ace answered.

The DEAD was just inside the entry door, and Balthazar slammed his hand onto the scanner.

All three, even Quatre, sighed as their bracelets fell silent.

There was another door directly opposite the DEAD; to Balthazar’s surprise, it was unlocked.

“The wheelhouse...” he murmured.

“...what’s this?” Their exit door was right next to the entry, and seemed to demand a very oddly-shaped key.

“What is what?” Ace caught up with him, glancing at the lock before reaching into his coat pocket. “Ah, try this.”

He pulled out a gold pocket watch, and set it into the indentation, although nothing happened.

“I suppose that would have been too easy,” he muttered.

“Where did you get that?” Balthazar asked.

“From the other room, of course,” Ace nodded to the door beside them. “I assume we’re meant to manipulate it somehow, to unlock the door.”

Belatedly, Quatre appeared as well, and Balthazar nodded to his teammates.

“Ace, since you have the key, you investigate the wheelhouse here,” he said with as much authority as he could manage. “Quatre, you’re in charge of the other room. I’ll start there as well and act as liaison. Any objections?”

“Aye aye, captain," Ace chuckled.

“...Quatre?”

She merely turned around, making her way back through the door. Balthazar cleared his throat, shrugged, and followed.

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CTllLbm1SeU0zUW8)

He shut the door behind him carefully, and came face-to-face with Quatre’s suspicious frown.

She cut to the chase. “Why did Santa want to see your paper?”

“I couldn’t say,” Balthazar shrugged helplessly.

 _"Did_ you cheat?”

“...er,” Balthazar wasn’t sure why he hesitated. “...yes.”

“Why?”

“I couldn’t have known in advance which way you would vote,” Balthazar explained, “so my first paper read Door 6. I...switched them, that’s all.”

“Okay, but _why?”_ Quatre only frowned more deeply. Balthazar held up his hands.

“No, no- I only wanted to finish our conversation from earlier,” he insisted. “You were going to tell me about an experiment, nine years ago?”

“Oh...” Quatre sank back again. “Yeah... I... I’m just not in the mood right now. You understand, right?”

“Of course.”

Quatre gave a small nod of thanks, and wandered away.

Balthazar took a deep breath and looked around.

In one corner stood a handsome bureau, the center drawer now wide open, but empty.

“Is this where Ace found the pocket watch?” Balthazar asked as he slid it shut and checked the surrounding drawers.

“Yeah.”

A shelf on the wall above the desk held several books, one of them leaning haphazardly against the rest.

“‘Ship’s Log’...” Balthazar cracked it open.

 

> _We leave soon for a new journey across the sea._
> 
> _After leaving port, we headed south and west._
> 
> _We turned southwest to steer around the continent, then proceeded northwest._
> 
> _We made port, then changed our heading to east for a time, and are now heading due north._
> 
> _Soon, we will dock in the United Kingdom, the homeland of this vessel._

 

Balthazar looked up. Mounted to the wall next to the desk was a map of the world, dotted with red pins.

“I see...” Drawing lines with his finger, he traced the ship’s route as recorded in the Log.

“I think this goes with it,” said Quatre, carrying over a stack of nautical charts she had taken from another drawer.

The ship’s route was outlined on the top chart, accompanied by what Balthazar knew were speeds.

FULL → HALF → SLOW → FULL → HALF → DEAD → STOP

“I don’t think there’s anything else in this room...” Quatre laid the charts on the bureau and began to walk away.

“You’re kicking me out?” Balthazar smiled at her back, and she glanced at him, then turned away without answering.

Balthazar stayed quiet for a moment, awkwardly rubbed his arm, then called after her.

“I’m sorry-- for earlier.”

Quatre stopped, and looked him over. “For...what earlier?”

Balthazar cleared his throat and straightened up. “For almost leaving Door 3 unchecked. I’d only just told you not to lose hope and then... I about ran away. I’m sorry.”

Quatre blinked, perhaps surprised. She stared hard at the floor, then looked back up at Balthazar.

“Who do _you_ think killed her?”

“I...” Balthazar rubbed his head and fished out his notebook and pen. “Well, I’d have to run the numbers. It could be anywhere from 2 - 4 people, after all. Just let me...”

“You really think that’s likely?”

“You...don’t?” Balthazar wasn’t sure what she could mean, but she seemed to think it obvious. Quatre motioned for his notebook and quickly wrote a series of equations.

a. 2 + (1 + 3 + 6) = 12  
b. 2 + (1 + 4 + 5) = 12  
c. 2 + (4 + 7 + 8) = 21  
d. 2 + (5 + 6 + 8) = 21  
e. 2 + (1 + 3 + 7 + 8) = 21  
f. 2 + (1 + 4 + 6 + 8) = 21  
g. 2 + (1 + 5 + 6 + 7) = 21  
h. 2 + (3 + 4 + 5 + 7) = 21

“These are all the combinations for 3 or 4 people,” Quatre explained. “...Balthazar?”

“Hm?”

“...I can trust you, right?”

Balthazar looked up, meeting Quatre’s gaze solemnly.

“Yes,” he answered as sincerely as he could.

“So... I can cross off all the ones with 5, right?”

“Yes. ...and 4, of course.”

Six of the eight possibilities disappeared immediately. Only a) and e) remained.

a. 2 + (1 + 3 + 6) = 12  
e. 2 + (1 + 3 + 7 + 8) = 21

“Wait-” Balthazar interjected. “It can’t be a).”

“No?”

“No.” Balthazar was firm. “June would never. I’d bet my life on it.”

“All right,” Quatre obliged easily enough.

e. 2 + (1 + 3 + 7 + 8) = 21

“Then there’s only one possibility,” said Quatre. “...well, what do you think?”

“...ah, I see what you mean,” Balthazar nodded. “If it’s e), then _everyone_ save me, you, and June is in on it.”

“And if that’s true,” Quatre continued, “why would they even bother trying to hide it? Why didn’t Seven and Ace just kill me too behind Door 3?”

“Then meet up with the others to finish off June and myself,” Balthazar concluded. “No, you’re right. It couldn’t be more than two people. In which case...”

He didn’t need his notes to run the numbers. Including Duo’s 2, the killers would need to make 10 for a combined digital root of 3. It couldn’t be 5 + 5, or 4 + 6, or 2 + 8, or 1 + 9, leaving only...

“Santa and Seven... oh God...” Balthazar raked his nails through his hair.

Santa and Seven... _both_ of whom had gone through Door 6 with Castiel.

“I’m sorry...” Quatre looked at him with clear sympathy. “I... kind of assumed you knew...”

“--oh _fuck--_ ” Balthazar’s heart hammered. “--but, _why--?!”_

“I don’t know-...” Quatre grimaced. “I really don’t--”

“We need to get out of here--” Balthazar shoved his notebook and pen back into his jacket and made for the wheelhouse door, “--as fast as we can!”

The wheelhouse opened into a room within a room, with a helm and compass in its center and a series of small windows on the wall through which Balthazar could see Ace hard at work.

“Well--?” Balthazar hurried into the larger room, startling Ace by a second helm and compass.

“What’s the matter?”

“We just need to hurry-” Balthazar shook his head. “What have you found?”

“Not much,” Ace admitted, gesturing to the helm in front of him.

“This one can be turned, which directs the compass, although I assume it requires specific directions that I don’t have. And this--”

A circular device stood next to the wheel, its front listing a number of speeds that Balthazar well recognized.

“It’s an engine order telegraph,” he explained, to Ace’s apparent pleasure.

“Ah, good, you’re familiar with it,” Ace tapped the top of the telegraph. “We could turn it if we had a handle.”

“Right, yeah-” Balthazar moved back to the wheel. “You said turning this also turns the compass?”

“Correct.”

Balthazar took a long, steadying breath, and grabbed the handles. Although he’d only read it once, the Ship’s Log’s directions were fresh in his mind. He spun the helm:

SOUTH → WEST → SOUTHWEST → NORTHWEST → EAST → NORTH

“--eh-” The topmost handle fell off into his palm. Balthazar shook off his surprise and hurried to the telegraph.

“I assume you found these directions in the other room?” Ace asked.

Balthazar shushed him sharply and pushed the handle.

FULL → HALF → SLOW → FULL → HALF → DEAD SLOW → STOP

“...nothing-?”

“Balthazar-” Quatre called to him, pointing through the windows to the smaller room.

High on the back wall, between the entry and exit doors, was something like an arrival board one might see in an airport. Judging by Quatre’s insistence, it had likely been empty before; now it sported a list of sea ports dotting the world.

Only one time was listed, at the final destination: ten seconds past 3 o’clock.

“Ten _seconds?”_ Balthazar frowned.

“--ah,” Ace reached into his pocket and retrieved the watch, cranking the dial until it matched the board. He pressed it into the exit lock.

“--thank God!” Balthazar nearly laughed, slapping Ace’s shoulder gratefully as he grabbed the door handle.

Beyond was a nook far too small and narrow to be called a hallway. Balthazar grabbed the next door handle and threw it open.

_“--shit-”_

It seemed they were far from clear, standing in a small room crammed with early 20th century communications equipment. Balthazar pressed on, to another door opposite their entry.

The plaque on the door gave him pause.

“‘Captain’s Quarters’...” Ace sounded apprehensive. “You don’t think...?”

 

_“I am Zero... The captain of this ship.”_

 

Balthazar set his jaw and braced himself. He _couldn’t_ stop, not without knowing Cass was safe. He pushed the door open.

The smell of blood hit him hard before he even saw the body.

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CYUstdHdGUUtpclU)

Laying on the floor, in a dark, red pool, was another person. Balthazar rushed forward, feeling for a pulse, but there was nothing.

Then he laughed.

Ace and Quatre jumped, following in confusion as Balthazar gestured to the corpse, dressed in a sea captain’s uniform.

“Look, it’s _Zero.”_ He lifted the person’s wrist, and something heavy tumbled off it and onto the floor.

A numbered bracelet, with a 0 on the face.

Balthazar laughed again as he stood, flecks of blood sticking to his jeans.

“...shall we split up our search this time, too?” Ace's voice was hoarse. “Who will take this room?”

“I don’t mind,” Quatre answered quickly.

“Balthazar, you...?”

“I’m fine,” Balthazar wiped the last trace of humour from his face. “And I’m still in a hurry. Let’s move.”

Ace seemed grateful to leave.

Quatre peered at the body. A bloodied axe lay tellingly by its side, although there was no wound visible.

“Are you...okay?” she asked Balthazar.

“You don’t find it funny?” He ran a hand over his face, not remotely amused himself. “I mean, a captain’s uniform, in the captain’s quarters, a 0 bracelet-- did Zero _kill_ someone just for an obvious red herring?”

Quatre reached down and picked the bracelet up.

“Do you think it’s actually 0?”

“Do you think it works?”

“No idea...” she murmured, pushing it into her pocket.

Balthazar sighed deeply, crouching by the corpse. “Help me turn them over.”

Quatre nodded, and together they rolled the dead person onto their back.

The cause of death was immediately clear: something sharp and heavy to the chest. Gingerly, Balthazar checked the pockets of their uniform.

He pulled out a folded slip of paper.

“‘Truth had gone, truth had gone, and truth had gone’,” he read. “‘Ah, now truth is asleep in the darkness of the sinister hand.’”

He and Quatre looked at each other. After a moment, she shrugged.

“I bet it’ll make sense with some other clue,” she said. “Is there anything else?”

“I don’t...think so,” Balthazar answered, standing. Quatre did not move at first, looking the body up and down.

“This blood is _really_ fresh,” she noted. “They must’ve been killed right before we got here, but...how?”

“It could only have been Zero,” Balthazar thought it over, “and if you’re right that there’s a Zero among us then this is proof there’s more than one of them.”

Finally, they left the body, taking a long look about the room. A bed and side table stood in one corner, opposite a desk with seven black-and-white television monitors set on top.

Across from the entry door sat their exit.

The door was locked electronically, but what caught Balthazar’s attention was the video camera pointed directly at it.

“It _is_ recording...” he murmured, examining it closely. “Must be a wireless.”

“So it’s sending the image somewhere else?” Quatre glanced around, and approached the monitors on the desk.

Seven locations around the ship were shown on screen, not all of which Balthazar recognized. He punched a random key on the keyboard...

...and the screens changed.

The top center screen now clearly showed the door being filmed in the Captain’s Quarters, while the bottom four screens read “z,” “e,” “r,” “o”.

“Hi _la_ rious.” He hit several more keys, but nothing changed.

Quatre pulled open the largest desk drawer.

Inside was a wide sheet of paper.

                                                                                        012345678  
                                                                                        0123456789abcdef  
                                                                                        0123456789abcdefghijklmn  
                                                                                        0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv

“That one’s hexadecimal,” Balthazar pointed to the second line.

“You know about number bases?”

“I had to, to get out of Door 4,” Balthazar glanced up from the paper to the door and down at the monitors. “Hang on...”

“We need to spell ‘zero’ in base-10, right?” Quatre caught on, although she seemed skeptical. “It can’t be that easy. We haven’t even been to the other room.”

Balthazar peered at the lock.

He hit the keys, but there was no reaction.

“Look here,” he pointed to the bottom right corner. “There’s a slot for an activation key of some sort.”

The bedside table to his right held no drawers, but Balthazar picked up a strange piece of small machinery off its surface.

“What...is that?” Quatre approached in confusion.

“It looks like the innards of a music box, don’t you think?” Balthazar frowned, turning it over in his hands and cranking the small handle at its side.

Perhaps it was a music box, but it was terribly out of tune.

“I don’t know...” murmured Quatre. “The bumps look different than a normal music box. What are all these long ones?”

“I think we’ll have to ask Ace,” Balthazar sighed. “We’re out of clues here, aren’t we?”

“You go,” said Quatre, taking a heavy seat on the bed. “I’m just...”

Balthazar understood.

He slipped into the communications office, nodding to Ace just as an object on the table in front of him caught his eye.

He opened a pack of miniscule screwdrivers and set to work on

“...a music box?” Ace leaned over his shoulder.

“Not anymore,” answered Balthazar. The oddly featured cylinder rolled into his palm, and Ace lifted it curiously.

“No, this wouldn’t play very well,” he nodded, motioning for Balthazar to follow.

To their left was a desk, loaded on top with radios or similar machines. A long cable was fastened at one end to the desk’s middle drawer.

“It’s locked,” said Ace, pulling a smaller one open. “But this-”

He pulled out a plain, white sheet of paper, then reached into his pocket and retrieved a small bottle full of

“...ink?” asked Balthazar.

“Does the pattern on this cylinder not look familiar to you?” Ace held it up to him, then carefully covered its surface with the ink, rolling the cylinder down the sheet of paper until a series of dots and lines appeared.

“Morse code!” Balthazar exclaimed. “Of course!”

“I tried to send an SOS earlier,” said Ace as he relayed the message from the paper through a nearby telegraph key. “Not that I expected much.”

There was a soft _*click*_ from their left, and Balthazar pulled open the locked drawer.

A slim, red book lay inside. The spine read

ALL-ICE

“Alice!”

“Hm?”

Balthazar didn’t answer, flipping hurriedly through the volume.

Every last page was printed in hieroglyphics. Balthazar scoffed and snapped it shut, dislodging a card that fell at his feet.

“Uranus...” Ace identified the symbol as Balthazar swiped the keycard up, then paused, squinting at the corner.

Unlike the other cards, this one had three words printed on its face.

“Bottom Deck Library”

“Oh, Lord...” Balthazar groaned faintly. Ace looked up at him with some concern.

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s-...” Balthazar sighed and ran a hand through his hair. As quickly as he could, he told Ace what he’d heard from Cass and Seven, about the _Titanic,_ ice-9, and the mummy who would not thaw: All-ice.

“Interesting...” Ace stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps a little unsettling, actually. For this hint to work, Zero must have known that at least one of us was familiar with the story.”

“...good point,” Balthazar murmured, tucking the card into his pocket.

“...Balthazar?”

“Hm?”

“Do you know about Cass?”

Balthazar bit his tongue, forcing himself not to react as he looked up again.

“Do I know about... sorry?”

“C-A-S,” Ace spelled it out. “The Cells Alive System.”

“No, never,” Balthazar shrugged, his stomach only gradually untwisting. Ace continued.

“It’s an experimental technology for freezing matter without the formation of ice crystals,” he said. “Normally, water within the cell expands as it freezes, damaging the cell membrane. CAS, on the other hand, supercools matter using magnetic fields, freezing it instantaneously, thus allowing no time for ice crystals to form.

“Its intended purpose is food storage, but of course it _could,_ theoretically, be used for other purposes.”

“‘Other purposes’?”

“You’ve heard of cryogenic freezing, no?” Ace asked. “A technology such as CAS might finally allow a way for the human body to be safely frozen for long periods of time.”

“And you mention it because...? ---no, hang on, you-” Balthazar laughed, more nervously than intended. “Are you saying...Alice might have been preserved with something like CAS? That she might be _alive?”_

“I wouldn’t consider it for a second, except that...” Ace paused. “It _might_ account for the murder in the Captain’s Quarters.”

“How...so?”

“Well,” Ace raised a hand, “who are the other suspects?”

“Zero, of course.”

Ace arched an eyebrow in response. “You _did_ notice how fresh that blood was, no?”

“Ah...” Balthazar followed his train of thought. “If the corpse is a clue from Zero, it should be older, is what you’re getting at. So...you’re ruling Zero out as a suspect?”

“I...wouldn’t go that far,” Ace admitted, “but if it’s not Zero, it also can’t be any of _us._ We three are the first ones to enter Door 1. We’re the only ones who _could_ have, but even then, we were trapped in the wheelhouse until we solved the puzzle.

“But...if Alice _is_ alive, if she managed to avoid Zero and is _still_ here, she would know this place better than anyone. The numbered doors would be meaningless to her; she could move as she pleased.”

“And she simply hasn’t made her presence known except to murder this one person?” Balthazar couldn’t help his skepticism.

“I agree it’s _quite_ unlikely,” said Ace, “but frankly, I don’t see how Zero being the murderer is all that much _more_ likely. It simply doesn’t make sense.”

“Hmm...” Balthazar glanced away, back at the drawer. He was in no mood for _this_ thought experiment with Santa and Seven still on the loose.

The drawer was indeed still occupied by a somewhat oddly shaped

“--key!” Balthazar grabbed it. “Yes, this is part of the exit lock!”

“Excellent!” Ace smiled brightly. “Are we ready to leave, then?”

“--no, actually, not quite yet,” Balthazar wiped the grin from his face. “It needs a numeric code as well. Quatre might have deduced it by now, but er...”

He did his best to offer an apologetic look to Ace. “Would you mind waiting out here? I’m not sure she’s...”

“Of course,” Ace was as amiable as usual. He gestured to the book tucked under Balthazar’s arm. “May I borrow that? I doubt it, but perhaps there’s something to discern from it if we look closely.”

“Sure, sure-” Balthazar handed to it him quickly and hurried back into the Captain’s Quarters.

He shut the door behind himself, and shuddered. Quatre raised her head to give him a quizzical look.

“It’s...actually _worse_ coming back,” he muttered.

“Meaning...?”

“Well, compared to the others, they--” Balthazar bit his lip, “they almost look _alive_ until you see the blood...”

Quatre’s sad gaze fell away from Balthazar’s face and onto the body.

“Was it really...that bad?” she asked, very quietly.

“Was...?”

“...my sister,” she murmured. “Did she _really_ die... _just like_ Number Nine?”

“--!.....” Balthazar stared at her for a long moment. He didn’t want to answer, in fact he wasn’t quite sure she asked. “You...didn’t see her?”

Quatre shook her head sharply, as though it were obvious. “Of course not. Seven and Ace wouldn’t let me near her once _they_ saw. I mean I _get_ it, but--”

She looked expectantly at Balthazar, who couldn’t help but look away.

“Uh, w-well, yes, _exactly_ like--” he took a deep breath and forced himself to face her again. “I mean, there was blood everywhere, and her b-bones...”

Balthazar gestured vaguely to his arm and torso, then shrugged helplessly and trailed off. He knew his face was drained of colour just recalling it, and his gaze fell from Quatre’s wide-eyed stare.

“Which arm?!” she demanded.

“...huh?”

Quatre leapt off the bed and jabbed her left arm. “Are you saying you saw the bones in her arm?! Which one? Was it her left arm?!”

Balthazar swallowed, bewildered. “-you, er...”

“Tell me!”

“It--well-- her left arm, yes, had the, uh-” Balthazar shook his head to collect himself. “The bone was sticking right out, yes-”

“You’re _sure_ it was her _left_ arm?” Quatre was in his face, pleading. Balthazar closed his eyes, thinking back as best he could.

“...Yes, definitely.”

“--oh...my God...”

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CdmZ1bmt4YTJ4UDg)

Quatre sank back on her heels, the purest relief washing over her face. Balthazar stared, utterly confused, as her eyes filled with happy tears.

“-thank you...” she murmured. “I can’t believe it... thank you so much-”

“W-what? I don’t understand--”

“-she’s _alive!”_ Quatre’s voice was a whisper as she leaned in. “That body _can’t_ be my sister! Her arm’s not--”

She shook her head. “Just trust me, I-- she _must_ still be alive!”

“W-well, of course, but then-...” Balthazar ran a trembling hand through his hair. It was dawning on him, all at once, that if the corpse in the shower room was not real, then there were no real murderers, meaning--

“No, no-” he muttered, shaking his head, “someone’s _real_ body is in that shower, and there _was_ a bracelet--”

He sighed, looking up at Quatre. “I’m really not sure what to make of this.”

“You’re thinking maybe Seven and Santa _are_ the killers but were tricked into killing someone they _thought_ was my sister?”

“Yes, exactly, but--” Balthazar turned anxiously on the spot, “that just seems so un _like_ ly-- but if the body is a plant and we’re all innocent, what would _that_ mean? Is it connected to _this_ one? Is there _another_ fresh corpse behind Door 6 as well? Do we have to go find one behind Door 2?!”

He sighed again, loudly, and dropped onto the bed. “And _none_ of this tells me whether or not June is safe, of course!”

He dropped his head with a groan, and watched Quatre’s feet slowly approach. She held something out to him.

“Here,” she said, pushing the four-leaf clover bookmark into his hands. “You need this back now.”

Balthazar stared down at it, running his thumb over the laminate. “...thank you.”

“Thank _you,_ Balthazar.”

“Hm?” He raised his head.

“I...can’t even really explain,” Quatre shrugged, a little awkwardly, “but having that helped...a lot. Thank you.”

“Oh...” Balthazar cleared his throat and glanced at the bookmark again. “It’s...funny, but...it’s not actually mine.”

“June’s?”

“No, er...” Balthazar almost didn’t want to mention it, but... “Santa gave it to me.”

The room went quite silent for a very long moment.

“...”

           “...”

                      “.....Santa did?”

 

“-er...y-yeah,” Balthazar mumbled as Quatre moved away and began to pace the room, “behind Door 4. She said she found it but insisted she didn’t want it so-...”

Quatre’s eyes were wide, boring holes into the floor as she walked, her fist pressed to her chin. She paced, turned, paused, muttered to herself, and paced again.

 

Six steps to the left.

   

                      Six steps to the right.

 

“-you know her?” Bewildered, Balthazar called out to Quatre. Her head snapped up to look at him.

“I _think_ so, but I never actually _met_ her. She must’ve been on the ship with my sister, but _I_ was in the Nevada group so I only heard about what happened--”

“--hang- hang on,” Balthazar stood, raising his hands as he approached. “If you _are_ going to tell me, could you do it in order, perhaps?”

“Oh right-” Quatre nodded solemnly and straightened up. “Hmm... okay, have you ever heard of morphic resonance? Morphogenetic field theory?”

“Yes, I have!” Balthazar exclaimed in surprise. “Behind Door 4, actually.”

“From Santa?!”

“Er, no, from Lotus-”

“Really?” Quatre glanced away, but quickly recovered. “Well, anyways, that’s good, I can skip ahead.”

She paused, taking a moment to nervously rub her hand. “Basically...nine years ago, my sister and I, and sixteen other kids, we were all part of an experiment to test morphic resonance.”

“Is that-...the experiment you mentioned earlier?”

“Yeah,” Quatre nodded. “This isn’t actually the first Nonary Game.”

“...pardon?”

“That’s what the experiment _was:_ the Nonary Game. We did _exactly_ what we’re doing right now, the same puzzles, everything. My sister was here, on the _Gigantic,_ with eight other kids, and the rest of us were in a replica in the Nevada desert, Building Q.”

Quatre took a deep breath. “They told us that...to escape, we’d have to transmit information between the groups, by accessing the morphic fieldset. The ability to do that _consciously_ is affected by two things: epiphany and danger. But the danger--...

“...the danger _has_ to be life and death,” her face fell as she spoke, “and, u-uh...”

“-no...” Balthazar caught on, horrified.

“Yeah...” Quatre nodded, her voice small, “one kid did die, here on the ship...”

She looked away, quietly clearing her throat and moving to the exit door. Balthazar stayed in place, still in shock. A sinking ache weighed down on his stomach, a feeling of painful familiarity...

“Did you um, find the key for this?” Quatre nodded to the lock. It took a moment for Balthazar to hear her.

“--oh, y-yes.”

Quatre quickly punched in the answer.

Z   E   R   O  
35 14 27 24

“Fantastic!” Balthazar nearly shouted just to feel some relief. Behind them, the door cracked open.

“Is that what I think it is?” asked Ace. Quatre nodded to him, and he clapped his hands happily. “Excellent!”

Through the door was a narrow hallway that curved off to parts unknown. Balthazar dashed around the corner

and jogged down the straightaway. He had almost reached the door when Ace called out from just behind him, pointing at the wall.

Ace carefully extracted the map of A Deck and traced a path with his finger.

“Yes, just as I thought,” he murmured, tucking it into his coat and moving on.

Balthazar couldn’t help a sigh of relief as they exited, finally, to the central staircase.

As the map had shown, they had made a loop, coming out to the right of where they’d entered. Balthazar leaned over the railing

 

                “Balthazar!”

 

and smiled. All of Team 6 was just below, Castiel waving up to them.

There was an uneasiness in the air as Balthazar, Ace, and Quatre reached the others. Their eyes were bright, but their mouths hard.

“We _found_ it!” Cass seemed both excited and tense.

“You fo-- oh!” Balthazar’s heart leapt. “Really?!”

Cass nodded, urging them all to follow to the C Deck elevators.

This time, they piled into the right instead of the left, and headed down.

“Basically, we did one big loop,” Seven explained as they arrived on the opposite side of the large grate.

“Likewise,” Ace replied.

Cass slowed his pace ever-so-slightly as Seven filled Ace and Quatre in. Balthazar fell into step with him, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

“You know the others could have left without me,” he whispered.

3 + 7 + 8 = 18

1 + 8 = 9

“Not that anyone actually suggested it,” he added quickly, “but Santa said ‘no’ even before they could.”

“Did she now?” Balthazar hummed. “I think I owe her a couple thank-you’s.”

“A couple?”

Balthazar shook his head and hurried onwards. The rest of the group had reached a single, wooden door with gold accents, the only place left to open.

“Ready?” Seven pushed the handle and led them inside.


	6. Door 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *****WARNING*****
> 
> **IF YOU HAVE NOT READ PART ONE,** [IT'S NOW OR NEVER.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15036260/)

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4Ca2VIVVFyalVqLU0)

9

There it stood. A set of double doors in the back of the room held the number they had been searching for.

Balthazar approached almost in awe. He checked the RED by its side as though to be sure it were real.

He took a deep breath, his stomach slowly twisting into a knot. They were seven people here, in front of one final door. Team 6 may have returned for the others, but who now wo

            “Balthazar.”

Cass called out to him gently, raising his arm to point across the room.

“--wha-?”

He could not believe his eyes. In the corner across from the entry, was another door

and another 9.

Another RED was bolted to the wall, reading “VACANT” just as a RED should.

“What do you make of it?” Ace asked Team 6. “Is one of them perhaps the ‘correct’ door?”

“I really don’t think so,” Santa answered. “That would make it a puzzle, and there aren’t any clues in here.”

She dug her hands into her pockets with a sigh and walked away. “I mean, it makes sense if you think about it. Zero never said ‘seek _the_ door which carries a 9’, right?”

“We were all supposed to get out this entire time,” Cass added dejectedly. “Even without Number Nine, with two doors we could have...”

Balthazar suddenly understood the team’s muted excitement. He laid a hand on Cass’ shoulder, but struggled to offer any reassurance.

“This is pretty much the same as the hospital room,” Quatre had been hunched over her notebook, and now held it out to the others. The open page sported a long series of equations.

1 + 3 + 5 = 9  
Remaining... 4 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 25

3 + 7 + 8 = 18  
Remaining... 1 + 4 + 5 + 6 = 16

4 + 6 + 8 = 18  
Remaining... 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 16

5 + 6 + 7 = 18  
Remaining... 1 + 3 + 4 + 8 = 16

1 + 3 + 6 + 8 = 18  
Remaining... 4 + 5 + 7 = 16

1 + 4 + 5 + 8 = 18  
Remaining... 3 + 6 + 7 = 16

1 + 4 + 6 + 7 = 18  
Remaining... 3 + 5 + 8 =16

3 + 4 + 5 + 6 = 18  
Remaining... 1 + 7 + 8 = 16

“These are the only possible combinations,” she explained. “Either four go through, leaving three people behind, or vice versa.”

The room shifted uncomfortably, no one speaking. Balthazar glanced sidelong at Lotus, expecting her usual pragmatism, but she looked no more satisfied than the rest of them, her arms crossed tightly.

From behind them, Seven loudly cleared his throat and reached for the notebook.

“No, no, no,” he admonished Quatre, “this is _exactly_ the same as the hospital room.”

Quickly, he jotted down two more equations below the others.

1 + 3 + 5 = 9  
4 + 6 + 8 = 18

Remaining... 7

“But that really is the only working combination,” he said, laying the pen down.

Quatre glared at him.

“I didn’t write it down because I’m not gonna fucking _do_ it!” she snapped.

Seven blinked, startled, and like that the silence was broken.

“Her _point_ was that there’s no way for us to leave right now, _obviously,”_ said Lotus.

“I was against leaving anyone then and I’m against it now,” Cass nodded emphatically.

“Call me a hypocrite if you will,” Ace smiled, “but I won’t allow it either.”

Balthazar chuckled. “Well, there you go, Seven. The vote is ‘nay’.”

Seven stared at all of them for a long moment, then turned away, his face ever-so-slightly flushed.

“Something wrong with you people...” he muttered, shaking his head as though he couldn’t possibly comprehend them. No one could help but laugh.   

“Hang on, what about _my_ vote?”

They stopped short, turning to meet Santa’s hard gaze.

“What about it?” Cass demanded, giving voice to their confusion. “You can’t possibly _want_ to leave him here alone.”

“Of course I’m not going to leave him here alone,” Santa shot back.

“Then what--”

“I said _‘alone’.”_

Balthazar narrowed his eyes. “Meaning?”

“I need two more,” Santa turned to him, holding up two fingers. “That’s my vote.”

She paused, as though mulling it over.

“No,” she added, “those are my _orders."_

The room stiffened. Lotus scoffed softly, but didn’t seem sure what to say. Balthazar glanced at the others, all of them caught between confusion and apprehension.

Santa did not move an inch.

Balthazar crossed his arms and looked her up and down, then sighed deeply.

“I _know_ I’m going to live to regret this...” he muttered, “but what makes you think we take orders from _you?”_

“In three seconds,” Santa answered calmly, “you’re not going to have a choice.”

She held up three fingers and began to count.

“3...”

            “2...”

                       “1...”

Balthazar jerked back just as Santa shot towards the group. She was _fast--_

Santa spun around, and

 

                       _*click*_

 

Cass struggled, pulling at Santa’s arm around his neck

            then froze as the barrel of the revolver pressed against his temple

“A-- a _GUN?!”_ Balthazar exploded. “Where the _hell_ did she get a _gun?!”_

He whirled around to the others. Seven and Lotus shrank back, looking pained.

“Behind Door 6...” Seven ground the words out between his teeth. “God _damn,_ I _knew_ we should have taken it.”

“We _agreed_ to leave it behind, but--” Lotus snarled.

“Your mistake,” muttered Santa. She didn’t waste time gloating, glancing quickly over her shoulder at the large 9 door and immediately moving towards it, dragging Castiel bodily along, his heels scraping up the carpet.

In a split-second, she threw her hand at the scanner, then jerked her head at the group.

“Ace, Lotus, congratulations. You’re coming with us. Verify, now.”

“Like hell!” Lotus snapped.

 

_*BANG!*_

 

They all jumped. Santa’s hand had barely twitched as she fired, leaving a smoking hole in the floor.

“I don’t actually need him, by the way,” said Santa, aiming the gun once more at Cass’ head. “I just need his bracelet.”

Slowly, Ace and Lotus inched forward.

“-n-no, _don’t--”_ Cass shook his head imploringly at them, but he was hardly convincing. His face was completely white, his whole body shaking even as he gripped Santa’s arm. Ace and Lotus froze in their tracks, their expressions torn.

They must have been shocked to feel Balthazar’s hand on their backs.

“Go,” he insisted quietly. “Quickly.”

_“Balthazar!"_

He met Cass’ eyes and shook his head.

“There's nothing for it,” Balthazar smiled, first at Castiel, then Ace and Lotus. “It’s either you two or Quatre and me, and...we _can’t_ leave yet.”

“That’s right!” Quatre caught on. “There’s still something I have to take care of. I _can’t_ leave.”

“I was going to stay anyways,” Seven shrugged amiably, laying a hand each on Balthazar and Quatre’s shoulders. “I’ll watch the kids. Don’t worry about us.”

“How can we _not--?”_ Lotus inhaled deeply and looked once more at Balthazar.

He nodded to her and turned to Cass, staring in disbelief.

“June,” he smiled, “I promise I'll see you soon. Wait for me out there, all right?"

Cass stopped shaking, a tinge of colour creeping back into his cheeks. He nodded, once, then set his jaw and reached for the scanner. Two asterisks now occupied the bar.

“Good,” Santa snapped. “Now hurry up, both of you!”

Lotus glared at her, then marched to the door and slammed her hand on the scanner. Ace followed slowly, looking coldly down at Santa as he scanned as well and pulled the lever.

The doors groaned open, and Santa jerked her head for the others to move, pulling Cass in with her last.

            “Goodbye.”

       

...

 

            ...

 

There was a long silence after the doors fell shut. Balthazar laid his hand on them and leaned in close, but could hear nothing.

Good

            ...right?

He sighed.

Seven cleared his throat.

“What kind of unfinished business do you have here, exactly?” he asked Quatre.

“Oh!” her eyes brightened instantly. “My sister! She’s still alive!”

“She’s--?”

“We deduced it behind Door 1,” Balthazar managed a smiled as he joined them. “The body in the shower is a fake. ...or at least a fake Duo.”

Quatre nodded vigorously. Seven looked them both over.

“And she’s still here on the ship somewhere, is what you’re saying? Where?”

“No idea,” said Quatre, quite seriously, “and the clock said 4:30 when we came down here, so we need to split up and find her, _fast.”_

They hurried to the exit

 

                                  _*knocknock_ _  
knock*_

 

and froze.

            _*knocknocknocknock*_

Balthazar flew back to the large 9 door as fast as possible and practically threw himself against it

 

_*knocknocknocknocknock*_

 

but it was not the source of the insistent pounding.

“Balthazar...”

Seven called to him awkwardly, and inclined his head towards the front of the room.

Balthazar had not noticed until now, but there was a raised platform between the two small doors, on top of which lay

a coffin.

                                  _*knocknocknocknock_ _  
knocknocknock*_

Someone was inside and wanted out, immediately.

“Oh my _God!”_ Quatre shouted as her eyes flew open wide. “Duo!”

“Du-- holy _shit!”_ Balthazar leapt over the coffin to grab one side, Quatre and Seven following suit. There was precious little purchase to be had, but they pulled with all their strength as long as they could.

Not even the coffin itself would budge from the floor.

 _“Fuck!”_ Quatre stared at her trembling fingertips, then knelt and knocked on the lid.

“It’s okay!” she called. “We’re looking for a way to open it, I promise!”

Quatre ducked her head and jabbed the side of the coffin. “Look!” 

There was a numerical keypad attached, almost identical to the one in the Captain’s Quarters, minus a keyhole. Quatre punched in the code from the latter, with no result. She pulled her hair with a snarl of frustration.

“There aren’t any clues in here, I can tell you that,” Seven told them quietly. “We checked it over the first time.”

“Right...” Balthazar sighed, running a hand through his hair and staring at the paper, “which leaves us with...this.”

“Well-” said Cass, “‘sinister hand’, if it’s literal, would mean the left hand.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Seven murmured, amused. “The left hand used to be the ‘evil’ one, didn’t it.”

Cass seemed a touch surprised at the news, thinking it over for a moment. “...oh yes, that’s true. ...I was thinking of the heraldry term, where ‘sinister’ meant the left side of a coat of arms.”

Balthazar laughed softly, and Cass smiled at him.

“All right,” said Balthazar, “I think we can be quite certain of that, then.”

His smile fading, he held up his own left hand. The only remarkable thing about it was the bulky bracelet still clamped to his wrist.

“Hm. Maybe these are more than just our numbers...somehow. But what about the rest of this?”

They gathered close and scrutinized the page.

“‘Truth had gone’ isn’t even a line that makes _sense,”_ said Seven. “Maybe those aren’t the... _right_ words.”

“Word substitution, you mean?” Cass tilted his head.

_“---ah!”_

Startled, Cass and Seven looked at Balthazar, tapping the page rapidly with his hand. _"Right_ words, you get it?”

They shook their heads.

“‘Truth’,” he explained, “something that is ‘correct’, or--”

“‘Right’,” Seven smiled and nodded.

“--yes, and ‘gone’-” Balthazar looked up, “when someone’s _gone,_ they’ve--”

“Left!” said Castiel.

“‘Right and left’,” Seven rubbed his chin. “...and?”

"Well..." Balthazar folded the paper and shoved it into his pocket, holding up his left hand. “...hm.”

He flipped his wrist, the solid metal ring telling him nothing. He stared at the display, then suddenly lifted it closer to his face.

“Wait a minute...” Balthazar raised his free hand to the rivets on the bracelet’s sides. Unlike those on a watch, they’d done nothing when pressed all those hours ago, back in the 3rd class cabin.

Why add them at all?

 

_“Truth had gone, truth had gone, and truth had gone.”_

 

Balthazar clicked the rivets in order:

 

right → left → right → left → right → left

 

...

 

One after the other, the numbers appeared on the bracelet’s face: 14383421

“What--what are _those?”_

“-what’s--?” Balthazar eyes snapped up.

Quatre gaped at him, bewildered

            and Balthazar could only stare back.

It took him a long moment to notice he was holding his bracelet up before his face.

“Those numbers-” Quatre insisted, a little more gently, “what were th--”

“--shhh!” Balthazar suddenly remembered, and quickly clicked the rivets one more time, just to be certain.

14383421

“What-” Seven stopped as Balthazar brushed past him, kneeling by the coffin’s lock and quickly pushing the buttons before he forgot again.

14383421

 

The lock clicked, the coffin door slid open, and

 

                       _“Duo!”_

 

“Q-quatre? Oh my God-!”

With a shout of joy, Quatre heaved her sister to her feet and pulled her out of the coffin, hugging her tightly. Duo laughed, slightly breathless and still unsteady, and hugged Quatre back.

"W-where’s everyone else?”

“We all thought you were dead!” Quatre’s voice was hoarse and wet with tears.

“Wha--? How long was I gone?!”

Balthazar opened his mouth to answer, but Seven prodded him and shook his head. They retreated politely to a pew near the back of the room, and sat down in something like relief for the first time since they’d arrived.

For just a moment, there was good in the air.

 

* * *

 

“--but someone - Zero, I guess - threw another one of those gas grenades into the room,” Duo finished her brief recount with a wan shrug, “and I woke up just now in that... that... coffin.”

While she’d rested, the others had filled her in on what had happened since she’d disappeared, including Santa’s betrayal.

Naturally, they’d asked Balthazar how he had suddenly deduced the combination to the coffin’s lock, but he couldn’t answer them. It was the solution to the paper they’d found on the Captain’s body, that much he was sure of, and that much they’d been satisfied with, at least.

But it was more like...

            he’d remembered

something that had not actually happened.

“So you don’t know anything about the body in the shower room?” Seven asked.

“Nope.” Duo shrugged again, then jumped to her feet and headed for the smaller 9 door. “C’mon, we’ve probably got less than an hour left now. Let’s go!”

2 + 4 + 5 + 7 = 18

1 + 8 = 9

The scanned their bracelets hurriedly, and Quatre threw the lever.

“Wait!”

She whirled around as the door creaked open, and fixed Balthazar with an odd look.

“Wasn’t expecting to hear that from _you.”_

“Really?” Balthazar offered a friendly smirk. “You’re forgetting something.”

 _"I_ am?”

“This might be our last opportunity to check the Captain’s bracelet,” he explained.

“Oh!”

Quatre dug into her coat.

“A 0 bracelet?” Seven stared.

“Or is it?” Balthazar raised an eyebrow. “That’s my point.”

“Good point.”

Balthazar nodded, and waved the bracelet over the scanner.

An asterisk did indeed appear.

“All right, so it _works,”_ Quatre raised her arm and scanned her number, turning to Balthazar. “If it’s really 0, it should open with just you and me.”

0 + 4 + 5 = 9

“Right.” Balthazar verified, and swung the lever.

The RED buzzed loudly, displaying the word “ERROR” in unfriendly red text.

“I suppose that _would_ be too easy,” Balthazar admitted.

“Try--” Quatre paused, mentally double checking, “yeah, try it with you and Seven this time.”

“Sure?” Balthazar shrugged, scanned his two bracelets after Seven, and pulled the lever.

The door swung open.

Balthazar frowned. “That makes it what...6?”

5 + 6 + 7 = 18

1 + 8 = 9

“Or rather,” Quatre corrected him, “the digital root of 24.”

“It’s-- ahh!” Balthazar caught on. “It’s not a _number_ 0, it’s a _letter_ O.”

“What’s that, number bases?” Duo cocked her head.

“Then there are two 6 bracelets in the game,” Seven stroked his chin.

“Well...”

Duo spoke up, nudging her sister with her shoulder.

“Mm.” Quatre nodded. “Yeah.”

She lead them to the pew still holding her notebook and turned to a fresh page, quickly scribbling another set of equations.

 

#1 - Door (4)  
6 + 3 + 5 + 8 = 22 → 2 + 2 = 4

#2 - Door (8)  
6 + 3 + 8 = 17 → 1 + 7 = 8

#3 - Door (6)  
6 + 3 + 7 + 8 = 24 → 2 + 4 = 6

#4 - Door (9)  
6 + 3 + 1 + 8 = 18 → 1 + 8 = 9

“All right, it’s every door June has gone through, and with whom,” Balthazar acknowledged.

“And the digital roots,” Quatre added. She took a breath. “Okay, point one: June’s bracelet isn’t actually 6.”

“Er...” Balthazar frowned. “If _not_ 6, then...?”

“9,” said Duo. “His bracelet’s flipped upside down.”

“But-”

“Yeah, I know,” Quatre quickly modified her equations.

#1 - Door (4)  
9 + 3 + 5 + 8 = 25 → 2 + 5 = 7

#2 - Door (8)  
9 + 3 + 8 = 20 → 2 + 0 = 2

#3 - Door (6)  
9 + 3 + 7 + 8 = 27 → 2 + 7 = 9

#4 - Door (9)  
9 + 3 + 1 + 8 = 21 → 2 + 1 = 3

“The digital roots don’t work,” Quatre nodded, “but we’re not done.”

“Balthazar,” Duo smiled, “do you notice anything about who _else_ goes through the doors?”

He and Seven looked over the page.

“Santa and Lotus,” said Seven. “They go through every door with June.”

“Let’s focus on Santa,” said Quatre.

“What happens to the math,” asked Duo, “if Santa’s bracelet is actually 0?”

#1 - Door (4)  
9 + (0) + 5 + 8 = 22 → 2 + 2 = 4

#2 - Door (8)  
9 + (0) + 8 = 17 → 1 + 7 = 8

#3 - Door (6)  
9 + (0) + 7 + 8 = 24 → 2 + 4 = 6

#4 - Door (9)  
9 + (0) + 1 + 8 = 18 → 1 + 8 = 9

“Nothing,” said Seven. “+3 and -3 cancel each other out. There’s no problem.”

“Are you saying--?!” Balthazar gaped at Quatre.

“Yeah,” she nodded, “there is a _really_ good chance that Santa is Zero.”

“The mastermind was playing by her own rules, then,” Seven smirked grimly.

“--by _using_ June!” protested Balthazar. “That’s why she ‘stood up for him’ when you first got here, because she _knew_ she couldn’t open Door 9 with you and Lotus at all! That’s why she pointed a fucking _gun_ at his head!”

“Balthazar...” Duo raised a hand gently, “Quatre told you, right? I _know_ Santa. This is actually a _good_ thing, really, cause-- I don’t... _know,_ exactly, what she’s after, but _we’re_ not her targets. The gun was just a bluff-”

“A _loaded gun_ is _NOT_ a bluff!”

“--no, you’re right, I’m sorry,” Duo shook her head. “It’s just... hm.”

“We don’t have time now to explain it all,” insisted Quatre. “Better we catch up to her instead, right?”

“Oh, I agree-” Balthazar hurried back to the small 9 door, pulling the lever once they’d all scanned their bracelets.

The DEAD was just inside the door, and they quickly made their way down a long, narrow hall towards a staircase that led to the bottom deck.

Two doors occupied the hallway beyond. Seven jogged to the further one while the others inspected theirs.

It was locked via a card reader sporting another astrological symbol, one Balthazar had just recently learned. He reached into his jacket.

“It was in the communications office,” he explained, just as Seven rejoined them.

“That door needs a key with Neptune on it,” he jerked his thumb towards the end of the hall.

“Then that’s what we’re looking for,” Balthazar nodded, sliding the Uranus card through the lock.

The small door opened onto a much, much larger double door, that slid slowly open as they approached.

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CODVOMFZ6dVJrNUk)

“Holy...”

They entered an enormous, two story, domed room - a library, just as the card said, the sort meant for long term storage rather than public perusal. The circular walls were packed on all sides with books, connected only via a thin, four point walkway with twin stairwells leading to the lower level.

On a table in the center lay a single piece of paper.

“‘Lights to the books!’” read Quatre.

“I don’t think we’re lacking for lights in here,” Seven chuckled, “but fine. Let’s start on this floor and move downwards.”

“Hey!” Duo called as they split up. “We don’t have time to go over a place this big with a fine toothed comb, and Santa knows it! Look for things that stick _out!”_

Balthazar turned back to the entrance and maneuvered his way to the nearest section of shelf.

Duo had been right on the mark. Almost immediately, Balthazar spotted a nearly empty row of books. Four slim volumes were wedged to the far right, each with four large letters printed vertically on the spines:

EPNO  
REEH  
NIDF  
LUBB

After a few moments’ thought, he quickly rearranged them.

OPEN  
HERE  
FIND  
BULB

The wall beside the books slipped open.

“I found a lightbulb!” yelled Balthazar as loud as possible.

“So did we!” Quatre answered him.

“I found--” Seven stopped himself as he opened the book he’d been waving. It was hard to tell from a distance, but something seemed to pop out of it.

They gathered on the walkway, Seven holding out what was, indeed, a pop-up book.

“L, R, K?” Quatre frowned. Three large, meaningless letters stood out from the pages.

“I mean, there’s probably more,” said Duo, “and _then_ we probably need to arrange them somehow to get the message.”

“Probably involving the light bulbs,” added Seven.

“Hang on,” Balthazar cut in, “don’t you two already know the solution? You’ve done these puzzles before, no?”

“No, not these ones,” said Duo. “We went through the other 9 door the first time.”

“What ‘first time’?” asked Seven.

“Oh...sorry. Hm...” Duo touched her chin. “Long story short, this is at _least_ the second Nonary Game. Quatre and I were, um, ‘participants’ nine years ago. So was Santa.”

“Ah... That’s how you know her.”

“But we didn’t come this way; we’ve never been to the library.”

Balthazar sighed. “Well, if the bulbs and books are connected, then we need at least one more book.”

He leaned over the railing and peered down into the lower level.

“There’s...some kind of device down there.”

Seven followed him down to examine something like a very large, 9-sided, circular tube sticking out of the floor.

Attached to the inside walls were three flat panes, like music stands, illuminated by three dim lightbulbs.

“What’s the magic number?” Seven chuckled, leaving to tell the sisters.

Balthazar remained downstairs, a shelf to his left catching his eye.

It held only a handful of books...as far as Balthazar could see _._ The glass was so dull and fogged that he could barely make out the contents. Six books, he counted, the spines numbered by volume, but out of order: 6, 3, 2, 4, 1, 5.

Balthazar glanced down at the number lock holding the panel shut, and rolled his eyes.

“You could have just left it open.”

He turned the lock until it matched the spines and pulled the glass doors open.

“-ah!”

“‘-ah’ what?” Duo called back as she came down the stairs.

“‘-ah’, another bulb,” Balthazar brushed his knees as he stood.

“Oh, good, we ran out upstairs.”

“The third picture book must be down here, too,” added Quatre.

Balthazar crossed the room to search another conspicuously roomy set of shelves.

Four sets of books on four shelves were pushed together, each set uniform in colour and numbered by volume.

“Dadkind, Leiberniz, Owen, and-” Balthazar paused at the fourth set.

“...and?” Duo crouched next to him.

“Sheldrake,” read Balthazar.

“...Sheldrake,” echoed Duo. “Quatre told you about him.”

“No, actually, Lotus got to me first,” he answered.

“Lotus, huh...?” murmured Duo. Balthazar turned to her.

“Your sister had about the same reaction,” he said. “You know Lotus, too?”

“...no, but...” Duo frowned in thought, “we might know her kids.”

“Not from-- the Nonary Game?”

Duo didn’t answer, merely shrugged and stood again when Quatre called them over to the circular book stand.

“We’ve got all the books,” she announced. “Let’s change the bulbs, quick.”

The superior lights projected a single word onto the floor of the tube.

“‘Sheldrake-5’,” read Seven.

“Ugh, him again,” scoffed Duo. “I _knew_ it.”

“This isn’t a fucking coincidence,” muttered Quatre.

“A message, maybe?” offered Seven. “From Santa?”

“Hannah.”

“...hm?”

“Her name is Hannah,” Duo repeated. She sighed softly, her shoulders sagging, then took a breath. “First she tells me to keep quiet, now this.”

“You mean, you’ve _known_ she was Zero the whole time?” Balthazar could not believe his ears.

“No, no, not like _that,”_ Duo clarified. “Remember the braille card Zero left me?”

“With the rules, yes, of course.”

“I...didn’t read the whole thing to you,” Duo admitted. “At the very end, Zero wrote: ‘Tell no one of the events that took place nine years ago, or I activate your sister’s detonator.’”

_“God!”_

“But don’t you think it’s weird?” Duo countered. “Why shut _my_ mouth but not Quatre’s?”

“You’re thinking we were always meant to hear this at some point,” reasoned Seven. “When the time came, as it were.”

“And Sheldrake’s name projected in giant letters is ‘the time’, is it?” Balthazar snorted.

“Balthazar... how much do you already know?” asked Duo. “About Sheldrake and the first Nonary Game?”

“Not much, really.”

 _"I_ don’t know any of it,” Seven reminded them.

“Right, yeah,” Duo nodded.

“Well, Sheldrake’s an English biochemist. A long time ago he proposed the theory of morphic resonance, based on the even older theory of morphogenetic fields. To make it _really_ simple, he claimed that all of humankind’s thought processes and actions create what he called ‘resonant events’ and that that information is stored in the field where it can be accessed subconsciously.

“Say a million people have solved a particular math problem. According to this theory, the next person who tackles it would _necessarily_ get it faster thanks to it having been solved so many times before.

“Or, say a million people do a handstand today. Tomorrow, the chances of you doing a handstand increase, even if you hadn’t heard anything about this...hypothetical mass handstanding.

“Anyways, that’s the relevant stuff boiled down.”

“Is it credible?” Seven raised an eyebrow.

“No,” answered Duo. “There isn’t any evidence for it, and there never was. But that doesn’t matter. The people who put the first Nonary Game together _believed_ in it, and here we are.”

“Imagine there was one person,” Quatre picked up the story, “who had the same _effect_ on the field as those one million people, whose thoughts and actions could influence the entire species.

“Or imagine there was one person who was so _sensitive_ to the field that they could more readily, even consciously, absorb its information. That’s what Cradle wanted to know.”

“It sounds like they were experimenting with mind control on a massive scale,” Seven noted.

“Cradle...” Balthazar murmured. “Cradle...Pharmaceutical?”

“Yeah,” Duo nodded. “The pharma company. Have you heard of the Ganzfeld experiment?”

“Who hasn’t?” Seven smiled.

“Telepathy, right?” added Balthazar. “Where one person has to identify pictures seen by a second person in another room?”

“That’s how they screened the subjects for the experiment,” said Quatre. “Cradle owned a hospital. They tested siblings who came for treatment, looking for specific pairs; one transmitter, one receiver.”

“One person who could write to the field, and one who could read?”

“Yeah,” Quatre looked down. “Then...they grabbed us.”

“Kidnapping...” Seven spoke as though it were familiar, then fell silent, frowning.

“Wait...” Balthazar raised a hand. “Was this...? Nine years ago, those sixteen children who went missing for nine days? Was that...?”

“Eighteen,” Quatre corrected him. “They split us into two groups, remember? You can’t play a Nonary Game with less than nine people.”

“Then the news was wrong?”

“Well yeah,” said Duo. “Hannah and her brother...they didn’t have any relatives. I guess no one reported them missing.”

“Oh...”

“Us here on the ship,” Duo went on, “we were the receivers.

“There are two things that make field access even easier than normal: epiphany, and danger. Epiphany is like...when you spend _ages_ on a tough problem, and then the answer suddenly comes to you-”

“Eureka~”

“Yeah! And danger... well...”

“It had to be life and death, Quatre told me.”

Duo nodded. “That was us, on the sinking ship. They told us our siblings were sending us the answers to the puzzles, and if we wanted to escape in time, we _had_ to access the field and use their help.”

“They sent us transmitters to a mock-up of the ship in Nevada,” said Quatre. “Building Q.

“We were the ‘eureka’ group. They told us about the sinking ship and said to save our siblings, we had to solve the puzzles, using the epiphany to send them the answers so they could escape in time.”

Balthazar swallowed hard, and grimaced. “And Santa was here, on the ship?”

“With her brother.”

“--but you said-”

“There was a mix-up,” Duo’s face darkened. “Two pairs of siblings ended up in the same place. Hannah _and_ her brother were on the ship, even though he was a transmitter. He was never...supposed to be here in the first place...”

“Wait...” Balthazar straightened up... then hesitated. “Was he... the one who died?”

“Yeah...”

Quatre put a gentle arm around her sister’s shoulders. Balthazar stepped back and looked away, and Seven excused himself to finish the puzzle, heading for the Sheldrake volumes on the low shelf.

“Well, well,” he called. “A big red button.”

Balthazar joined him, crouching down for a look.

“Hit it,” he muttered.

_*SCREEEEEEEEEEECH*_

All four of them clapped their hands hard over their ears as an unbearable grinding sounded out around them. Quatre’s head snapped up, and she yelled something none of them could hear.

“--what?!” Balthazar jogged towards her once the sound had ceased.

“The walls _moved!”_ she pointed. “Upstairs!”

“--aaah!” Balthazar dashed towards the gap as they reached the top floor. Two of the bookshelves had indeed parted, revealing two narrow, metal doors on either side of

a tiny screen, with room for only four characters, above a keyboard without numbers. Four Roman numerals were engraved above the screen.

XIII XIV X XIII

“Well _that’s_ depressing,” scoffed Quatre, quickly converting the code into hex and typing in the answer.

13 14 10 13  
D   E   A   D

There was a click to their right.

Balthazar and Seven grabbed the door handle and spun it, ushering the others through.

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CVndCUVVONThLVjA)

A small, dark, and _incredibly_ messy room lay beyond

but Balthazar hardly noticed. The door slammed shut behind them, and Quatre pulled at it futilely, but all Balthazar could do in that moment was look slowly up at Seven.

The older man looked back, and gave a tight, almost imperceptible nod.

 

 _“Alice sleeps in a small chamber past the forest of knowledge, beneath the navel of the_ Gigantic.”

 

If that were-- if it _could_ be true, then...

“Okay, the exit’s over here! It’s the other door in the library!”

Quatre had carefully, _carefully_ made her way through the mess to find their way out, and was waving them over. With the floor completely strewn with bits of electronics, Seven helped Duo onto his back and carried her across for safety

while Balthazar stayed still a moment longer.

 

_“Have you heard about CAS?”_

 

He shuddered, and joined the others.

“It needs a key card,” Quatre repeated for his benefit. “Let’s try the Uranus one again first.”

“Even if that works,” added Duo as Balthazar handed it over, “we still need the Neptune key.”

“We need both,” said Quatre as the lock stayed red. “Fuck...”

“There’s gotta be _some_ thing that stands out,” Duo tried to reassure them as they assessed the mess. “Like I said, we’re _meant_ to be in a hurry.”

“Then why not just let us _go?”_ Quatre scoffed, making her way forward.

“Is it me,” Seven spoke up, “or does this mess all look familiar?”

Balthazar’s eyes swept across the floor, and caught sight of a drawing table near the entrance.

The paper attached to it was long faded, but he identified it immediately: a nautical chart, criss-crossed with red lines in almost exactly the same pattern as that behind Door 1.

“You’re right,” he called to Seven. “All this junk looks like pieces of the puzzles we’ve already solved. I think this is where Zero put it all together.”

“See?” Duo grinned. “This is the redux boss gauntlet before the _final_ boss! We’ll be out of here in no time!”

“I think we’ve got three old bosses here,” Quatre told them, motioning them to a console in the middle of the room.

“See the map?” she asked Balthazar.

“Vaguely.”

The console’s screen showed an extremely faint map of the world. Balthazar crouched down to its front

and, as expected, found a compass and steering wheel.

“I found the chart for this one,” he said. “I’ll take this puzzle.”

“Sure,” agreed Quatre. “To your left-”

she pointed to another console, “you’ll find a magic square involving number bases-”

“Ooh, me!” Duo waved a hand. “Let’s do that one!”

“-and to your right-”

“-a morse code puzzle.”

“I’m fine with that,” said Seven, “except the morse code part.”

“Well, there are instructions for the magic square,” Quatre thought it over, “and a map for this puzzle. There’s probably a morse code chart around somewhere.”

Balthazar turned to his “puzzle” as the others split up, not that there was much to it.

As before, he needed only turn the compass to match the path on the nautical chart.

SOUTH → WEST → SOUTHEAST → NORTHEAST → EAST → NORTH → EAST

 

_*BRIIIING!*_

 

Balthazar nearly jumped as the console rang like a bell.

“What the hell was _that?!"_ snapped Duo.

“Guess I won,” muttered Balthazar.

“Did you get a prize?”

“Er...”

In fact, it appeared he had. A case next to the console screen had slid open, revealing a small crest with a helm emblem on its front. He swiped it up and joined the sisters.

“We’re almost done,” Quatre informed him. “We just have to get those red ALL squares lit up.”

Before Balthazar could even make sense of the puzzle, Quatre hit three of the magic square’s boxes

and the “ALL”s turned green. A victory tune, less jarring than the bell, played,

and another case slid open, revealing a crest with a cross emblem.

“Did you say something about ‘all’?” Seven called to them from the far side of the room.

“Yeah?”

He didn’t answer, merely chuckled grimly and pressed a button on his console several times until he, too, claimed a prize.

“The answer was ‘ice’,” he told them, with a quick glance at Balthazar. He’d obtained a crest with a code emblem. “And I heard something unlock over there.”

Seven nodded over his shoulder past the morse code puzzle.

They approached a shuttered closet close to the exit door, and together, Balthazar and Seven swung it open.

“It _can’t_ be--” Balthazar snapped his mouth shut and swallowed hard. Inside was a coffin, a very _old_ coffin, with a faded gold plaque on its front that read

“‘ALL ICE’,” Duo ran her fingers across it. “Oh, the puzzles.”

She grabbed the lid and made to open it, but Quatre stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, turning slowly to face Balthazar and Seven with a puzzled frown.

“What’s...wrong?”

“Nothing,” answered Seven, even as they leaned away.

“Bullshit.”

She narrowed her eyes, but got no response.

“Wait...” Slowly, she looked back and forth between their pale faces. "You _can't_ be serious. You think she's actually _in_ there? _Right now?"_

"Who?" Duo asked loudly.

"I'll tell you later," Quatre answered her quickly and turned back to the others. "We _have_ to open this. If you faint, we're leaving you behind."

Balthazar took another half-step backwards. “Go ahead.”

Duo snorted softly. “You know, the _last_ time you found a coffin, it was _good_ news.”

With a grunt, she wrenched the coffin’s lid off. Balthazar and Seven tensed sharply

then burst out laughing.

The coffin was completely empty.

“What?!” demanded Duo, although she seemed about to laugh herself, if only in confusion. _“What?”_

Balthazar wiped the tears from his eyes and straightened up, still shaking. “It’s-- oh God- it’s a _long_ story.”

“Whatever.” Duo scoffed good-naturedly, and crouched on the floor by her sister. The coffin was not, in fact, _entirely_ empty.

At the very bottom were two small items: a crest with an emblem like the waffle pattern on the coffin’s front, and

“The Neptune key!” Duo identified the symbol with her thumb, and held it up triumphantly.

“Great!” Quatre helped her stand. “Then we just need a key card for the door.”

“Well, what’s left?” Seven cleared his throat as he tucked his handkerchief back into his breast pocket.

“Over here,” Quatre motioned for them to follow her to the back of the room.

A computer desk with a single, locked drawer at its bottom left stood facing the wall. There was a keyboard, mouse, three large and one small television monitors on top of it. Between the keyboard and the mouse were four indentations in the shape of the crests they had unlocked.

Balthazar leaned down and peered closely at them.

“They’re numbered,” he told the others. “1) helm, 2) cross, 3) code, 4) coffin.”

“Well, that’s clear enough,” Quatre shrugged.

Balthazar took the helm emblem from his pocket and inserted it into the 1) indent. The monitors powered up.

Nine circles, numbered 1 - 9, laid across the top of the screen, with the 9 circle coloured red. Underneath were two large boxes, with the numbers 6 and 3 in their top left corners.

“I think these are the rules,” Quatre was leaning in front of the small monitor to the right.

“‘When you touch a numbered area, that area will be selected’,” she read. “‘Touching a numbered ball after selecting an area will move the ball to that area.’

“‘You can only move 3 to 5 balls into a single area. You cannot move the red balls.’

“‘Press the ‘Check’ button once you have moved all of the balls. The digital root of the balls in an area must match the number for that area.’ That’s it.”

“In other words, it’s the Nonary Game,” noted Seven.

“With the assumption that Number Nine is ‘dead’ from the get-go,” added Balthazar, an uneasy feeling pressing against his stomach. “...interesting.”

The puzzle was easy enough. Balthazar placed the first three balls into the 6 area

1 + 2 + 3 = 6

and the rest into area 3.

4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 30

3 + 0 = 3

There was a satisfied _*beep*,_ and the screen went dark.

“Oh yeah-” Quatre retrieved the cross emblem and slipped it into the indentation.

The same puzzle reappeared on screen, the numbered areas now 1 and 7, and the 1 and 9 balls both red.

Balthazar cracked his knuckles for no particular reason, and set to work.

2 + 3 + 5 = 10

1 + 0 = 1

4 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 25

2 + 5 = 7

The code emblem was next. Both numbered areas were now 7, and the 3 ball had been redded out.

“Ace is still in the game, but...” Duo wondered aloud. “Do you think the red balls mean something?”

“It _does_ seem that way with the 9 and 3 balls, doesn’t it?” answered Seven. “But how could Santa have known Number Nine would kill themself? I doubt it actually could mean anything.”

“Yeah...” Even as Duo tentatively agreed, something nagged at Balthazar, a strange certainty that Seven was mistaken, that the statement “kill themself” was...not correct.

He returned his focus to the puzzle.

4 + 5 + 7 = 16

1 + 6 = 7

2 + 6 + 8 = 16

1 + 6 = 7

“Just one more-” Quatre quickly entered the waffle emblem.

The numbered areas were 8 and 9.

The 6 ball was now red.

Balthazar frowned deeply at the monitors, almost not hearing Quatre when she spoke.

“Wait, you need at least three balls per area, but there are only five left.”

“Yeah, but what do those five make?” Duo asked in response.

Wanting nothing more than to leave, Balthazar hurriedly dragged all five balls into the 8 area and hit “check.”

2 + 4 + 5 + 7 + 8 = 26

2 + 6 = 8

There was a _*click*_ to their left

and Balthazar pulled open the desk drawer.

Inside was a photograph.

Four people stood on the ship’s central staircase, raising a toast and smiling for the camera. Two of them wore white lab coats, albeit with fine eveningwear underneath.

“What the hell...”

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CLWpSQWNUNC1ZWjQ)

Not that any of that mattered. Balthazar, Quatre, and Seven all stared at the photo in disbelief, with Duo clearly alarmed at the silence.

“--what?!” She shook her sister’s shoulder urgently.

“Ace...” Quatre murmured in response.

“Ace? Ace is in the picture?”

Not only Ace. Three of the four people, Balthazar recognized.

To the far right, alive and well, was the person they had found dead in the Captain’s Quarters.

Second from the left was Number Nine.

And finally, to the far left, was Ace.

“They all look much younger, don’t they?” Balthazar asked quietly, flipping the photo over to check the back.

There was no date, but a handwritten comment.

 

“Praying for the success of the Nonary Project, with Metatron, Lilith, and Zachariah.”

 

“Holy...” Balthazar nearly cursed, and Quatre clapped her hands over her mouth.

“Ace...?” Duo’s face was pale. “Ace did...the Nonary Project? That was _him?”_

“But is he Metatron, Lilith, Zachariah...” Balthazar flipped the photo back, staring hard, “or the one who wrote that line?”

“Michael.”

Seven’s voice was strained, and they turned sharply at the sound. He ran a hand over his face, pale and drenched with sweat.

“May I...” he cleared his throat awkwardly and reached out, “see that for a moment?”

“Are you...all right?” Balthazar asked, handing it to him.

Seven didn’t answer, grabbing the picture and turning away to pace the room.

“Michael... Lilith... Metatron... Zachariah...”

He muttered the names over and over to himself under his breath, wiping his handkerchief across his face and pacing, pacing, pacing

“Michael... Lilith... Metatron... Zachariah...”

“Seven, are you all right?” Balthazar called.

“Shhh!” Seven threw an arm out. “I’m _this close_ to remembering--”

They stayed quiet.

Seven stopped, holding the photo closer, rubbing his eyes, staring

then suddenly, he stumbled, leaning heavily against a desk, his teeth gritted in pain.

Balthazar and Quatre hurried to help him into a chair, but said nothing, waiting anxiously.

Seven took a long, deep breath, and frantically tapped the photograph.

“God-- _damn_ , I-I remember! I remember them-- I _know_ who they are-”

“The leaders of the ‘Nonary Project’, right? Cradle Pharmaceutical?”

Seven nodded. “From the right, that’s Zachariah. He was Cradle’s majority stockholder, and put up most of the cash for the project.

“Next to him is Lilith. She was Michael’s right hand, and did the lion’s share of the planning and design.

“Metatron was the head of R&D. He took Lilith’s plans and put the actual technology together. Finally...”

“Oh my God...” Quatre’s eyes went wide. “Then Ace-”

Seven nodded again, sympathetically. “Ace is Michael, CEO of Cradle Pharmaceutical. All told...the Nonary Project was his. His vision.”

Quatre turned to her sister. “Duo, did you...?”

but Duo shook her head. “I knew Michael was on the ship with us nine years ago, but we never... I didn’t know his voice. I had no idea.”

Balthazar stayed quiet, running his tongue over his dry lips. Ace was Michael, Ace ran the Nonary Game nine years ago, the game that killed Santa’s brother.

Why did that incredible revelation feel nothing like a revelation at all?

“How do you know all this?” he asked, just to fill the silence.

“I told you, I got my memory back.”

“No, I mean- why did you _have_ those memories in the first place? How do you know about Cradle and the Nonary Project?”

“Oh, that,” Seven chuckled tiredly. “I’d _love_ to tell you. It’ll only take about...three days.”

“We don’t have three _hours."_

“You must have a short version,” insisted Quatre. “I think it’s pretty clear we’re supposed to be hearing this.”

“Hmm.” Seven rubbed his chin. “I make no guarantees.”

He glanced once more at the photo, then set it down and straightened up in his chair.

 

Seven was a detective, formerly with the police, now in business for himself.

                      

Nine years ago, eight pairs of siblings had disappeared on the same day, all across the country. The parents of one pair had hired Seven, and an old friend on the force had passed along one odd tip.

_“The hospital.”_

Every one of the children had a history of visits to a hospital owned by a corporation: Cradle Pharmaceutical.

It took six days to shake them down. Almost no one, no matter how high he went, seemed to know a thing.

But finally, he got a lead.

A certain ship, he was told, was set to leave a certain port the following night, and would transport the missing children to a passenger liner out at sea.

Seven went alone.

It wasn’t long past dark, but the wharf was nearly deserted. The few people left were clearly on the lookout, the watch for a group in suits quickly loading large bags onto a small boat.

                      

There was something about the way the bags moved as they were carried...

Seven had no doubt: there were people in those bags.

Quietly, he drew his gun, and slipped out of the shadows.

_“Don’t move!”_

but the voice wasn’t his.

_“Drop the gun.”_

With the unmistakable press of a pistol against the back of his neck, Seven carefully put his own on the ground. He felt a jab to his neck, and quickly blacked out.

...                                 

...                      

...           

 

Cold concrete pressed against Seven’s head as he slowly woke. With a soft grunt of pain, he pushed himself to his feet and looked around.

                       

The room was small, old, and filthy. A shabby bed sat opposite a dirty sink and toilet, behind only the barest of partitions.

It was a place all too familiar from his time on the force.

“My own private cell,” he scoffed.

                       

He approached the narrow door behind him and leaned in close, but could hear no one on the other side. He gave the door a tug

then a hard pull

but, unsurprisingly, it was locked.

Seven sighed, and dropped onto the bed, rubbing his aching head. A long, metallic groan sounded out around him.

Where was he?

Where were the children?

Had he failed them completely?

 

 _"there...s! over...! it's...ine....!"_            

 

Seven’s head snapped up.

The voice was faint, very faint, but he hadn’t imagined it.

Seven leapt to his feet and listened.

 

 _"hur...! o...ere!" "...kay...ing!"_            

 

Was it coming from his left?

Was it coming from his right?

Was it coming--

Seven grabbed the tiny bed and heaved it onto its side.

_There._

Beneath the bed was a vent. He pressed his ear to the grate and held his breath.

 

_"what...go...ow?"_

 

There were several voices, all soft and high-pitched even as they shouted, almost certainly

_\--the kids!_

Was this--the passenger liner?!

Seven could hardly believe his luck. The vent was _just_ large enough to fit him, if he could get it open. He braced himself on his knees, grabbed the grate with both hands

and _PULLED!_

“Ha!”

                      

It was pitch black inside, his broad shoulders pressing against the walls as he crawled. There was only one way forward, and Seven followed it until the duct widened and branched off.

He could hear the children’s voices, louder now, coming from his left. Just as he turned, the ground began to shake, a loud, metal grinding, like an enormous door sliding shut, rang out around him and shook the area.

A cold, mechanical voice spoke.

 

_“Warning:_

_“Emergency incineration command has been acknowledged._

_“Incineration will commence in...18 minutes. Please evacuate the incinerator immediately.”_

 

[♫](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CNVdBYnp2Z0RsUHc)

Even over the siren that followed, Seven could hear the children screaming.

 _“Nooooooooo!”_                       

 _“HEEEEEELP!”_            

Seven lurched forward, crawling as fast as he could. He reached a small, metal door, and forced it open.

There they were.

Not all of them; Seven quickly counted only nine heads. The room they were locked in - the incinerator - was an enormous circle, with a ceiling like an upside-down funnel.

A chimney.

Seven looked back down as the children stared up, their faces pale and tearful.  

“Who are you?!”

One child, a girl, he would learn, and at a glance the eldest, called up to Seven sharply.

“I’m a detective!” he answered. “Your parents sent me to find you!”

They huddled closer to the wall desperately.

“Where are the others?” he asked.

“They’re not here!” said the elder girl. “It's just us nine!”

 

_“Warning: automatic incineration will take place in...16 minutes.”_

 

“Please, get us out!” Several of them pleaded, terrified.

He was at least 30 feet from the floor. There was no conceivable way Seven could reach them, but--

“I can get you out!” he promised. “I just need to get a rope! I’ll be _right_ back!”

He made a sharp turn and began to crawl, even as the youngest children begged him to stay.

Seven, of course, did not have a rope, exactly. But he knew what he needed.

Back in the cell, he grabbed the blanket from the bed and tore it into strips, binding them together as well as he possibly could.

 

_“Warning: automatic incineration will take place in...12 minutes.”_

 

“God damn!”

The children looked almost shocked to see him back, as though they couldn’t believe it.

At least, the ones who were left.

“Hey!” he called down, “where are the rest of you?”

The elder girl pointed to a huge, sliding door, with a number 9 painted on it in red.

                      

“They left!”

“They _left?”_

“Only five people, _max,_ can go through, or we’ll be killed! Hurry, please!”

 _"Je_ sus-!”

Seven had no idea what he was hearing, but it didn’t matter. He lowered his “rope” as quickly as possible.

 

_“Warning: automatic incineration will take place in...10 minutes.”_

 

“Tie that around your waists and I’ll pull you up!”

First up was a girl with a ponytail

“Don’t turn right, it’s a dead end,” he told her.

followed by a young boy, and a little girl in a private school uniform.

 

_“Warning: automatic incineration will take place in...6 minutes. Please evacuate the incinerator immediately.”_

 

Finally, the elder girl grabbed the rope, climbing up on her own with incredible speed. Just as she came within reach, the siren abruptly turned off.

All was silent.

“Don’t go right, it’s a dead end,” he whispered to her.

She nodded, and crawled away.

Down on the incinerator floor, two other doors ground slowly open, and a man appeared.

He had jet black hair, neatly groomed, and wore a white lab coat over a fine suit. He stepped into the room and looked around quietly, a small but rather cold smile on his lips.

Seven carefully shut the door behind him, and followed the children.

The vent only went right and straight on, and eventually dipped downwards like a chute. Seven slid out, and found the four children he had rescued waiting in an open space.

                      

On one side was a metal double door.

                      

On the other side, a large sliding door with a plaque affixed up above.

                      

_"Incinerator"  
_

“No point going back there,” said Seven.

                      

They burst through the double doors and took off running up a narrow, spiral staircase.

They ran

and ran           

and ran                      

passing several landings with doors they ignored

they ran for many, long minutes

until suddenly, the elder girl stopped short, nearly knocking Seven over as she turned and sprinted back down

“What-- where-?!”

“My brother’s missing!”

Her voice was already faint. The ponytailed girl was far ahead and still running, but the girl in the uniform - blind, Seven knew from the missing persons reports - stopped with him, winded.

“Can you keep going by yourself?”

“No!”

Seven sighed, lifted the girl in his arms, and took off after the elder, tossing a quick glance into every nook he passed as he ran back down the narrow stairs.

As he neared the bottom, he could hear someone banging frantically on heavy metal.

 _“Just hang on, okay?!”_            

It was the girl’s voice, sounding strained even at a distance.

                      

Seven burst onto the bottom deck. The girl was pounding on the door to the incinerator

but so was someone else.

“They got him!” The girl looked at Seven desperately, tears in her eyes.

_“Hannah!”_

A tiny, terrified voice echoed from the other side of the door.

“It’s okay, the detective’s back!” The girl tried to reassure him.

There was no time to ask how it had happened. Seven set the girl in the uniform down and grabbed the door with both hands, pulling with gritted teeth until his palms were red.

_“DAMMIT!”_

_“--w-what’s wrong? -please get me out!!”_

“We will!” promised his sister.

Seven looked around. His best bet was to find the culprit and force them to open the doors.

 

_“Warning:_

_Emergency incineration command has been acknowledged.”_

 

A familiar siren began to wail.

 

_“Incineration will commence in...9 minutes. Please evacuate the incinerator immediately.”_

 

 _“HANNAAAAAH!!!”_ the boy screamed, clawing at the door. _“HANNAH PLEEEEASE! I DON’T WANNA DIE!”_

 _“YOU WON’T!”_ but the girl’s face was completely white.

Seven found the chute they had escaped from, but it was too high up sheer wall to be reached again.

“I’ll be right back!” he told the girls, and took off as fast as he could.

...

...                                 

...                                                                  

...                                                                                                   

Seven cleared his hoarse throat and rubbed his eyes. Balthazar straightened up slowly.

“But...he died...?”

Seven nodded. “The whole area was closed off. No one else was around. There was nothing we could do. Eventually...”

He sighed, very, very sadly.

“...the countdown ended.”

[♫](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CYUstdHdGUUtpclU)

                      

They could hear the fire roaring inside.

The girl in the uniform clung to Seven’s side, shaking violently.

The elder girl simply collapsed onto the floor.

                      

Several minutes passed in silence, until the doors slid open.

                      

The elder girl shot forward before Seven could stop her.

                      

The air inside burned his lungs, but the girl pressed on, her pace slowing as her legs trembled

until finally           

she stopped.                      

She knelt on the floor, and picked something up in the palms of her hands.

_"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"_

...

                                                                             ...

                                            ...

           ...

 

Seven began to stand, then fell back into his seat. Quatre touched his shoulder and squeezed gently.

Balthazar’s mouth was too dry to speak. A cold lump had formed in the pit of his stomach, a sickening feeling of anticipation even as Seven finished his recollection.

Seven turned to Duo.

“You were there, weren’t you?” he asked. “You were the little girl in the uniform.”

“Yes, Detective,” Duo answered, stepping closer for the first time. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell you. You know why, but...”

“It’s fine,” Seven assured her, “I couldn’t remember anyways. ...I almost wish I didn’t now.”

“I can’t believe it was you,” Quatre’s eyes were wet. “The detective who rescued my sister, the kids on the ship-”

“Not all of them,” Seven murmured.

“There was nothing we could do,” Duo insisted. “I was there, and we _tried._ It’s not your fault.”

Seven merely hung his head.

“Anyways-” Quatre cleared her throat. “Now we’ve found a pattern to the deaths so far. I think it’s safe to assume the body in the shower is Lilith, which means three of the four Cradle execs are dead. It’s pretty clear who the next target is going to be.”

“Michael,” Duo nodded. “Their leader.”

“If this game is about revenge, though,” wondered Quatre, “why not just make them players? What do we have to do with this? Does Hannah blame _us,_ too?”

“I doubt it,” said Duo.

“Well, what about Balthazar?” Quatre jerked a hand at him. “You were never involved at all. I’m just-- more confused now.”

“If they were all players, they’d have a chance to survive,” Seven pointed out. “The only way to guarantee her revenge was to do it herself.”

“Except she hasn’t killed anyone herself,” Balthazar spoke up suddenly, surprising himself with his own certainty. “The others may have been murdered, but not by her, not directly.”

“How do you know?” Quatre frowned.

“It just...doesn’t add up,” was all he could say. “I mean, Ace is a player. Why give the ringleader the best chance for survival? Why did she take him through Door 9?”

“Maybe to keep him from hearing all this?” Duo proposed. “Although...he might know who she is anyways...”

“We have to catch up with them-” Quatre leaned over Seven and reached for the desk drawer.

Under the photograph was a keycard, with a 0 on its front.

“Let’s go!”

“Wait!”

It was the second time Balthazar had stopped them. The sinking feeling had not left him, making him shiver before he could speak again.

There was something he needed to know.

“What was his name?”

“Whose name?” Duo tilted her head.

“Hannah’s brother,” Balthazar looked at each of them. “What was his name?”

“Why?” Quatre didn’t seem sure what to make of his insistence. “Did you know them?”

“I- I think so...” Balthazar shrugged, somewhat helplessly.

“That _would_ make more sense,” Duo admitted softly.

“They were the ones who weren’t reported missing,” said Seven. “I didn’t know their names either until I found them. I’m not even sure I heard his at all...”

“I know his name,” said Duo, “I just...”

Her shoulders shook slightly. Quatre laid an arm over them and raised an eyebrow at Balthazar.

“I’m sorry,” he said to her. “But I _need_ to know.”

Duo raised her head.

“Castiel,” she said. “That was it...”

Balthazar stared at her, his mouth slightly open. Quatre, her expression softened by concern, asked him something he could not hear; his mind, his whole body was numb. A crushing pressure gripped his heart, pumping ice cold blood that roared in his ears until his vision began to blur. His head swam. He swayed on his feet.

Seven caught him by his arms and directed him to the chair he'd just been occupying. Their time limit was again forgotten as they waited for Balthazar to simply breathe.

"I'm so sorry," Quatre murmured, laying a hand on his shoulder. "He must've been a good friend."

“...yeah,” Balthazar could barely lift his head. “We...were in elementary school together.”

Quatre gave a small nod. Seven moved to help Duo towards the exit.

_Hannah and... Castiel._

Yes, Balthazar remembered now. Cass had a sister named Hannah. She was three years their elder, and Balthazar had hardly seen her after third grade...

...but he knew.

Hannah _was_ Santa. Cass’ sister was Santa.

Cass’ sister was Zero, _became_ Zero so she could get revenge for his death.

But then...

...who was June?

 

_“Balthazar!”_

Quatre called to him, the door unlocked.

They hurried through, back into the library and to the hall outside.

Quatre unlocked the Neptune door and flung it open.

They rushed into an open space, all metal and harshly lit. A thick, sliding door to their left, ringed with yellow-and-black warning tape, had a plaque nailed above it.

_"Incinerator"_

“Fitting, I suppose,” Balthazar muttered.

“There’s a lever next to it, right?” Duo asked quickly.

Seven pushed it down, and the door groaned open with a low, metallic screech.


	7. TRUE

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CNVdBYnp2Z0RsUHc)

They burst into the scorched room. Balthazar whipped his head around, but June was nowhere to be seen.

Santa--

            Hannah--

Cass’ sister was doubled over on the ground, holding her stomach in pain. Seven dashed over to her and lifted her to her feet.

“What happened?!” he bellowed.

Santa winced, and jerked her head over her shoulder.

“-s-sucker--punched m-me--” she gasped, “--took the gun-”

There was a sliding door, with another 9 on its front, at the back of the room, and Ace stood in front of it. One hand had a death grip on Lotus’ wrist, and the other was pointing the revolver at her head.

“So you _were_ still alive,” Ace almost seemed amused as he looked down from atop the short steps leading to the door.

“Is he talking to me?” asked Duo loudly. “What made _you_ think I was still alive?”

“Because he’s the one who tried to do you in,” Balthazar answered, stepping closer. “Only he fucked it up.”

Ace’s face hardened, his gaze sliding from Duo to Balthazar.

“It seems you have me at a disadvantage,” he said softly.

“We know who you are, Michael,” added Seven, crossing his arms.

“Doesn’t matter,” Ace snapped. He glanced over his shoulder at the RED and quickly scanned his bracelet.

He forced Lotus’ hand onto the scanner as well, then snatched one more bracelet out of his pocket, the gun never wavering from her temple as he flicked it across the panel.

The number 9 bracelet, Balthazar knew.

“You may know who I am,” said Ace, “but it’s too late. I will escape from here, and the rest of you will have a less pleasant ending. Goodbye.”

He pulled the lever down

_"ERROR"_

but it merely blared at him.

“What...?” Ace stared. Lotus broke free and made to run, but he grabbed her wrist once more and forced it onto the panel, along with his and Nine’s bracelet. He swung the lever.

_"ERROR"_

“It _has_ to be 9!” he shouted, slamming the lever as though he could make it obey. Lotus’ eyes met Seven’s, and she nodded urgently.

With Ace distracted, Seven charged, slamming into him at top speed. Ace’s head cracked against the door, and he tumbled down the steps onto the floor with a groan of anguish. Lotus kicked the gun as hard as she could, sending it flying, and ran straight for the others.

Ace leaned heavily on his hands, struggling to his knees, but didn’t dare stand up with Seven hovering over him furiously. He sighed, running a hand over his bruised cheek.

“I got my memory back,” Seven informed him. _"That’s_ how I know who you are. We met in this room nine years ago, although you wouldn’t know it.”

“Ahhh,” Ace nodded, rather lethargically. “I see. You’re the one who interfered. True, I never did find out who you were. But how did you know I tried to kill that girl?”

“Why don’t we go through them in order?” Balthazar joined Seven by Ace’s side. His head felt strange, as though stuffed with cotton, and he balled his hands into fists to keep from trembling. “Lilith wasn’t your only victim, after all.”

Ace slowly raised his head, a puzzled frown on his face. Balthazar glared at him.

“You convinced Number Nine - Metatron - to go through Door 5 himself. The way I figure it,” Balthazar tapped his finger, “you had three reasons:

“1. 9 is the most valuable number in the Nonary Game. It can be added to any other number without changing its digital root.

1 + 9 = 10 (1 + 0 = 1)

2 + 9 = 11 (1 + 1 = 2)

3 + 9 = 12 (1 + 2 = 3)

“The ‘9’ bracelet holder can go wherever they want, with any team they choose. You wanted it for yourself, so you had to kill the holder.

“2. Metatron knew you and your past. You had no way of knowing if he was still loyal or if he would betray you, and you wouldn’t take that chance.

“3. You knew he, too, would take any chance to get ahead, so you used him to conduct a test, to see whether this Nonary Game was real or an elaborate joke.”

“Who _are_ you?” Ace demanded weakly. Balthazar ignored him.

“Second was Lilith. While we were all looking for the missing RED pieces, you left to grab Metatron’s bracelet, and when you came back, you _thought_ you saw Duo entering the large hospital room.

“You remembered her from nine years ago, but did she recognize you? Did her sister know? Were they waiting to expose you, or maybe working with Zero? You had no way to know, so when you caught her by herself, you went straight for the kill.

“You used your bracelet, hers, and Metatron’s, and you pushed her through Door 3. Except it wasn’t Duo at all, but Lilith that you murdered.”

Ace half-stood, then seemed to think better of it.

“Finally,” said Balthazar, “there was Zachariah.”

“Wait, that was Ace?!” Quatre sounded shocked, and Balthazar could feel Seven’s eyes on him as well as he nodded.

“You ran the Nonary Project,” Balthazar explained. “You knew the solution to every puzzle. You didn’t _happen_ to find that pocket watch in the chart room; you _grabbed_ it so that you could sneak into the Captain’s Quarters and back out again with no one the wiser.

“I must say,” Balthazar crossed his arms. “That was _incredibly_ risky of you.”

“I had no choice,” a grim smirk flashed across Ace’s angry face. “He might have exposed me.”

“He _might?”_

“How did you know he was there?” asked Seven.

Ace reached into his jacket and held up a small, folded slip of paper.

“I had this on me when I woke up on D Deck,” he explained, letting Seven take it from him.

“‘Number 1’,” read Seven, “‘There are two ways you might survive this ordeal.’

“‘The 1st is to win the Nonary Game.’

“‘The second is for you to confess your sins of nine years past.’

“‘I have prepared a camera in the Captain's Quarters. The images captured by that camera will be streamed through a satellite and distributed across the world. Simply look into the camera and repent.’

“‘Once you have confessed everything, I will release you from this ship.’

“‘To make your confession more credible, I have left you a witness in the Captain's Quarters. Perhaps he will confess with you.’

“‘The decision is yours. Do as you please.’

“‘-----Zero-----’”

“I didn’t know it was Zachariah until I got there,” added Ace.

“But you meant to kill him anyways from the start,” Balthazar gritted his teeth.

“Of course.”

Ace simply shrugged, sitting back and touching his cheek once more before continuing. “He seemed...rather disoriented, at any rate, as though he’d just woken up from sedation. So did Lilith, in fact.”

“And there was an axe just sitting there, practically _begging_ you to kill him,” Balthazar scoffed. “You may have been played, but you fell for it hook, line, and sinker.”

Ace looked up at him oddly. “Yes, you’re quite right. I _was_ played. Why were the parts for the REDs removed? Why was Lilith wandering around in Duo’s clothes right in my path? Why _was_ there an axe next to my ‘witness’? Every move I made was anticipated, _every_ thing was planned. I _did_ fall for it. I...can’t imagine how I didn’t see it until now.”

He frowned. “There’s just one thing I still don’t understand.”

“What’s that?”

“Who _are_ you?” Ace asked again. “You weren’t one of my test subjects, but this game can only be about revenge. Who are you, Balthazar? Why did you do this?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then you’re an accomplice.”

“Not at all,” Balthazar insisted.

“Impossible,” Ace sneered at him. “Only Zero could know what you do.”

“Clearly not,” Balthazar scoffed, “but why don’t we ask her?”

Ace followed his gaze as, all at once, they turned to Santa, still leaning on Quatre’s shoulder for support and gingerly holding her stomach. She straightened up slowly, a quizzical look on her face, and took a step forward.

“Why me?” she asked. “I’m not Zero.”

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CYUstdHdGUUtpclU)

“Now _that’s_ impossible,” answered Balthazar. “We _know_ what this is about, Hannah.”

“Are you sure?” Santa walked away, across the room.

They didn’t notice until it was too late.

She picked up the gun

 

            and pointed it at Ace’s head.

“You’re right,” she spoke to the group, her face hard as she stared down at Ace, “I _am_ Hannah. Nine years ago my brother and I were test subjects on this ship. _I_ was supposed to be here, but he- he was a transmitter.”

She grabbed Ace by the collar and hauled him to his feet, the gun never leaving his temple.

“The Nonary Project was designed to test a particular phenomenon,” she explained. “Morphic resonance, the morphogenetic field theory, living organisms transmitting knowledge in the absence of physical contact.

“Why did the glycerin begin to crystallize? Why did the EDT begin to mutate? Why did the rats perform better with each generation, even when they weren’t related?

“Could human beings transmit information the same way? Could they do it _consciously?_ That was what the Nonary Project meant to determine. They split eighteen children into two groups: us receivers were on the _Gigantic,_ playing the game while the ship sunk. The transmitters were in Nevada, in an exact mock-up of the _Gigantic,_ Building Q.”

“And Cass was a transmitter who was supposed to be there,” Balthazar cut in. “But he was placed here by mistake, and that’s why he died. If this isn’t about revenge, then--?”

“Balthazar,” Santa looked at him calmly. “Were you surprised when you found out Ace was Michael?”

Balthazar blinked, and fell silent.

“How did you know he’d killed Metatron, and why?” Santa went on. “How did you know about Lilith and Zachariah? What about the passcode for the coffin, how did you know that?”

“How do _you--”_

“Just answer me,” she said. “Have you figured it out?”

“I...”

Balthazar froze, cold sweat beading on his face and prickling down his spine. He couldn’t answer, because he _didn't_ know. He’d had no choice but to accept that he knew things he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t explain it.

Santa watched him, they all did, waiting for him to speak, but there was nothing he could tell them.

Not yet.

He would know soon enough, though, because the answer was really quite simple.

He knew because _I_ knew.

Balthazar was receiving information I sent him through the morphic fieldset.

How do I know the alternate futures, then?

Imagine a river that splits in two, like an upside-down Y.

The river flows from the top to the bottom, from a single stream into two branches. It only flows in one direction. It can never flow backward.

Information is the same way. It moves from the past to the future, but never flows backward.

That's why people at the river's source, in the past, will never know about those downstream, in the future.

But the people downstream will never know about one another either. Information only flows along the path of the river.

But I am different.

I can manipulate the morphic fieldset to pluck knowledge from the future. I know what happens on either fork of the river...

           ...even though the people on either fork know nothing about one another.

                                 Now...

                                                       Who am I?

                                                                             I am “I”, the 9th letter of the alphabet.

 

                                                                                                   But... I am also Zero.

 

“I don’t know,” Balthazar admitted. “But _you_ must. Can’t you tell me? What is this about?”

Santa was not disturbed by his answer. Slowly, she began to move backwards, dragging Ace along until they reached the door.

“Didn’t I tell you, Balthazar? I’m Santa Claus. I’m here to make a wish come true.”

The door slid open, just a crack, and she stepped through it with Ace in tow.

“And _you’re_ here to save my brother’s life.”

The door slid shut before any of them could reach it.

“That’s _it?!”_ Lotus whirled around to face the others. “What now? Balthazar, what did she mean?!”

Balthazar started and shook his head.

“‘What now’?” Duo wrinkled her nose. “What _else?_ You know where we are, don’t you?”

“You _can’t_ be serious.”

“That’s what happened nine years ago,” Duo informed her grimly. “If this is a faithful recreation, then...”

“But _you_ got out! How!?”

Duo shook her head. “Didn’t you see what happened just now? Ace _tried_ to leave. He was right, the number _should_ be nine, but it’s clearly _not_ now. And even if it were...”

“We couldn’t all get out,” said Quatre. “Our digital root is 8.”

2 + 4 + 5 + 7 + 8 = 26

2 + 6 = 8

Lotus was quiet for a moment.

“This...other Nonary Game, with the eighteen children, was it _exactly_ nine years ago? This day?”

Duo, Quatre, and Seven all nodded. Lotus’ eyes widened, then fell, and she wandered away, deep in thought.

The others stood in silence for a moment. Seven left to peer up at the duct he had emerged from nine years earlier, but, of course, there was no way to reach it.

“I know the wait is excruciating,” Duo spoke up, “but we’re _meant_ to do...something, once it starts, so let’s just...”

“Yeah, ‘it’,” Quatre huffed a small, grim laugh, then shivered.

Balthazar licked his lips, staring at the floor.

_Save_...Cass’ life? How in the world...?

No, it didn’t matter. If, _if,_ it were truly possible, he would do whatever he could.

He just had to wait.

...

           ...

                      ...

I was watching.                                                                                                                                                                         

Everything he saw, I saw.                                                                                                                                       

Everything he heard, I heard.                                                                                                           

My consciousness was inside of him.                                                                        

Our resonant events had merged, and we were as one.                      

I _was_ him, and, at the same time, I was an observer.

 

 

 

There was a thunderous noise.

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CdmZ1bmt4YTJ4UDg)

That’s how it began. A bomb had gone off on the ship, and I awoke in two realities at once. I was myself, but I was also with him, nine years in the future.

_“This one, come this way!”_                       

                             

We burst into the large hospital room for the first time. It had been about two hours since the Nonary Game began. We’d been through the first set of doors and all emerged

but we were just kids, and we were coming apart at the seams.

Most of us were arguing, shaking, panicking. We were all terrified. The two youngest children fell on the floor and sobbed.

Hannah was the oldest of us, and desperately trying to hold us all together. I wanted to help, but I didn’t know how.

Then I remembered: I had my gift in my pocket.

“Hannah-” I tugged her sleeve.

“What?!”

I knew she didn’t mean to snap. I quickly held out the bookmark to her.

“I just thought...if everyone saw this, maybe they’d feel better?”

Actually, it sounded a little silly when I said it out loud, but Hannah nodded enthusiastically.

“Yeah Cass, I’ll bet th-- _HEY!!"_

A pair of boys had come to blows, the smallest children howling in distress. I retreated quietly, sitting down on a bed. I had to think of something, to help her.

“If everyone saw what?!”

I jumped. I hadn’t heard Ariel sit down. She tilted her head toward me to hear my answer, because of course, she couldn’t see me. She was blind. Nine years later, we would call her Duo.

“I have- I got a four leaf clover for a present,” I said, “I made it into a bookmark...”

I took her hand and pressed the bookmark into it. She ran her thumb over the clover, a grin spreading on her face.

“Is it really a _real_ four leaf clover?!”

“Y-yeah.”

“Coooool,” she pushed it back into my hands.

“I just thought...” I blushed, “since it’s good luck, maybe it would help? But I dunno...”

“Want me to get their attention?”

“...can you?”

“Yeah!”

She suddenly grabbed my shoulder and hoisted herself onto the flimsy metal bed

                             

_*SLAM!*_

_*SLAM!*_

_*SLAM!*_

and jumped up and down as hard as she could. The bed rattled so much, I fell onto the floor.

“ARIEL!” cried Hannah. “That’s _dangero--”_

“HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO _GIIIIIIGANTIC!!”_

Ariel bellowed at the top of her lungs, throwing her arms out wide.

“IT’S SO GREAT TO HAVE YOU ALL HERE! WE’VE GOT A REAL GOOD SHOW FOR YOU TONIGHT IF YOU’LL JUST LOOK RIGHT!

“DOWN!

_“HERE!”_

I could _feel_ her pointing straight at my head as seven pairs of eyes slowly fell on me. I clutched my gift, frozen and completely red.

“What’s he got?” one of the boys asked Hannah.

She stared a moment longer, then rallied quickly, smiling at them.

“Why don’t you go find out?”

One by one, the other children gathered around me, many still shaking, or sniffling, but all of us desperate for the distraction. Ariel leaned on my head and clambered back down next to me.

I held out the bookmark where everyone could see.

                             

“I got this--p-present,” I stammered at first. “It’s real!”

“--can I touch it?!”

Everyone clamoured for it at once, sending it zigzagging around the circle. If it hadn’t been laminated, they would have torn it apart.

I wasn’t worried. For a few moments, they almost looked happy.

“You know what it means, right?” Ariel smiled, rocking back and forth on her feet.

“Good luck!”

“It’s good luck!”

“It’s more than that!” Ariel insisted. “Every leaf means something different: hope, faith, love, _and_ luck!”

“Listen to me,” Hannah spoke up gently. “Right now, all of our siblings in Building Q are trying their hardest to send us the answers so we can get out of here in time, and that’s why, no matter what, we can’t lose hope. We have to remember how much they love us and have faith that they’ll get us out.

“If we can do that, I’m _sure_ it’ll bring us all good luck.”

For a long moment, everyone was silent, holding my bookmark. We all nodded.

We all promised.

Finally, we were able to move on.

                             

                             

                             

We pressed on

                             

                             

                             

solving puzzles hour after hour, doing our utmost to keep our promise and stay calm

                             

                             

so we could access the field and get help.

Finally...

                             

                             

we found it.

Or rather

                             

...we found _them,_ the two 9 doors.

We split up for the last time

                             

                             

                             

and regrouped in front of the final door, in the incinerator.

                             

“Why’s there only one?”

“How do we get out?!”

“Let’s go back!”

Hannah looked around the room as Ariel and I tried to keep the others calm.

It worked until the doors slid shut behind us.

 

                             

_“Warning:_

_Emergency incineration command has been acknowledged.”_

_“Incineration will commence in...18 minutes. Please evacuate the incinerator immediately.”_

 

“What’s that mean?!”

“Incinerate means _burn!”_

“What’s going to burn?!”

_“Nooooooooo!”_                       

_“HEEEEEELP!"_            

We all panicked, we all cried. We clung to each other and to Hannah, but even she was pale, her eyes wide with fear.

Just then

 

_*SLAM!*_                       

 

a door far above our heads snapped open, and a large man appeared, staring down at us in shock. Nine years later, we would call him Seven.

“Who are you?!” Hannah yelled.

“I’m a detective!” he answered. “Your parents sent me to find you!”

_A detective! Were we--saved?!_

 

_“Warning: automatic incineration will take place in...16 minutes.”_

 

“Please, get us out!” we begged him.

There was no way he could reach us, but--

“I can get you out!” he promised. “I just need to get a rope! I’ll be _right_ back!”

As soon as he disappeared, we broke down. What if we ran out of time?!

But Hannah pulled us together again, sending five of us ahead through the 9 door. Only she, myself, Ariel, and Nona remained to wait for Seven. Nona’s twin sister, Ennea, was in Building Q. Nine years later we would come to know their mother as Lotus.

 

_“Warning: automatic incineration will take place in...12 minutes.”_

 

“H-hannah...” I squeezed her arm, and she hugged me tightly.

“Hey! Where are the rest of you?”                      

The detective was back, and he really did have a rope in his hands.

“They left!”

“They _left?”_

“Only five people, _max,_ can go through, or we’ll be killed! Hurry, please!”

_"Je_ sus-!”

 

_“Warning: automatic incineration will take place in...10 minutes.”_

 

Nona went up first, then me, then Ariel.

I waited in the duct for Hannah to get out safely, and we crawled along as fast as we could until we came out a chute and fell down to the floor.

                             

There were two doors. The incinerator,

                             

and a metal double door that _had_ to be our way forward.

                             

Inside was a narrow staircase that went up as far as we could see. Just barely, we could hear the other five kids higher up, cheering each other on as they ran.

We took off after them at top speed. I pulled ahead with Nona as Hannah and the detective stayed a little behind with Ariel. Nona was even faster than me, and soon I was running all by myself in the middle of the group.

That’s when I noticed it was missing.

My bookmark--

\--my _present--_            

\--my good luck charm was gone!

I knew, I _knew_ I had it with me in the duct. Could it have fallen out when I came down the chute?

Over and over we passed landings leading to the central staircase, and I ducked into one, hiding in the shadows. I knew if the others saw me, they wouldn’t let me go back, but I _couldn’t_ escape without it! It was our promise!

I felt a rush of air as Hannah, Ariel, and the detective whipped by me. As soon as their footsteps faded, I dashed back down the stairs as quickly and quietly as I could.

                             

_There--!_

It was right where I thought it would be, sitting under the vent. I picked it up off the floor and st

 

“So good of you to come back.”   

 

A shadow fell over me, and I snapped my head up. A man with jet black hair, wearing a lab coat over a fine suit, was looking down at me. I didn’t know it then, but it was Michael, the person who had designed this hellish “game” we were playing. Nine years later, we’d call him Ace.

He was smiling at me, but his smile made my blood run cold.

Michael held his hand out to me.

“Come now,” he said calmly. “Let’s finish the experiment.”

I shook my head desperately and stood up, slowly backing away from him.

One step

 

two steps                      

 

Michael seized my wrist, dragging me along towards the incinerator door.

I cried out, planted my feet firmly on the floor and struggled as hard as I could, but he was an adult, and much too strong to resist.

The incinerator opened as we reached it, but so did the door to the stairs, and Hannah burst through it.

_“Heeeeeeelp!”_

I screamed for her, and she lunged at Michael, but he hauled me off my feet and stepped through the door that was already sliding shut.

                             

Michael dropped me, and I collapsed on the floor, terrified. Behind me, Hannah pounded on the door, screaming at Michael.

He turned back to the RED by the 9 door. I couldn’t see what, but he pulled two objects out of his coat and held them up to the RED. I heard two, faint _*beeps*,_ and then he dropped the bracelets onto the floor.

                             

“I’ve scanned a 1 and a 3 for you,” he told me, crossing the room to another door. “What is your number, boy?”

Shaking, I glanced at my wrist.

“F-five...”

1 + 3 + 5 = 9

_Nine!_

I bolted, slamming my hand onto the scanner, but nothing happened. I heard Michael scoff at me quietly.

“The recognition function will not reactivate until you’ve solved the final puzzle,” he said.

“I can’t!!” I cried. “P-please, I need help! Let Hannah help me, _please!”_

She was still pounding on the door, calling to me. Michael didn’t move.

“You _have_ help,” he said. “Access the field and you’ll have all the help you need.”

“I _can’t!”_ My legs gave out from under me as tears rolled down my cheeks. “I don’t know how!! I’m not--”

“Then I’m afraid you’ll burn alive,” Michael’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. “It’s going to be quite hot in here in a few minutes.”

I broke down and sobbed. He opened the door beside him and left the room. I couldn’t move, not even to reach Hannah.

Suddenly, the light in the room turned red, and a siren began to blare.

 

_“Warning:_

_“Emergency incineration command has been acknowledged._

_“Incineration will commence in...9 minutes. Please evacuate the incinerator immediately.”_

 

“Oh, hell.”

_This is it,_ I think, looking up as the lights change. _Whatever Hannah needs me to do, it’s coming now._

As if on cue - no, _right_ on cue - a section of the floor opens up, and a bizarre machine rises out of it.

I forced myself to stand and move towards it, my legs shaking violently.

I had no idea what it could be, but there was a screen and a keyboard attached.

It had to be the “final puzzle,” my only chance to survive.

I peer at the blank screen, then tap a few keys rather at random.

Nine 9x9 grids appeared on the screen, filled with a random jumble of numbers.

In a separate column to the right, the numbers 1 - 9 were lined up.

“Sudoku,” I laugh in something like relief, running a hand through my hair. _Thank God, that could’ve been_ **_so_ ** _much worse._

_What... what is this...?_

I didn’t recognize the puzzle, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I was good with numbers, good at math, but what was I even supposed to do here?

A cold despair filled my body, and I slumped onto the ground, crying hard.

_I’m going to die._

_I’m going to die._

Michael was gone, and Hannah was trapped outside. I was alone, and there was nothing I could do.

 

_“Warning: automatic incineration will take place in...7 minutes.”_

 

I pulled my bookmark out of my pocket and held it tight, my tears falling onto its surface. Even my connection with Balthazar had been gone for a while now. I was supposed to be with the transmitters, I couldn’t access the field like Michael wanted me to!

But with Balthazar’s help I had made it this far.

I squeezed my bookmark as hard as I could and pressed it to my forehead.

I prayed.

_Help me, Balthazar, please..._

 

_Please, please help me...  
_

 

_Help me...!_

 

_**HELP!** _

 

“Cass!”

_...?!_

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CLU5wVHNKczc2Znc)

I shout out loud, gripping the keyboard.

“What?!” Lotus snaps in surprise. “What’s--”

“Quiet! just--”

I wave them away, I have to _focus-_

“Cass! Are--are you there?!”

I couldn’t believe it. I’d heard him speak before, but not to _me!_

“B-balthazar? _\--Balthazar!!”_

_Incredible... it’s_

It’s Cass’ voice, no doubt about it. But not...the Cass I just met.

No, _much_ younger, like the Cass I knew in school...

I struggled to my feet, still shaking. I looked around, as though I could see him in front of me.

“Please, Balthazar! Help me! I can’t- I can’t get out! I don’t wanna die!!”

_Can’t get out...?_

_No... no way..._

“Cass? Cass! Are you in the incinerator?!”

_“Yes!!”_

He knew!

_Can it be...?_

“Are you looking at the sudoku puzzle?”

“I-I-I don’t know! I don’t know what these boxes and numbers mean!”

_Must be._

I sigh with relief. I manage to smile.

“It’s all right, Cass, _I_ know. I can solve it for you, I promise.”

“You can?!”

Even through the terror, a great swell filled my heart. I stood as high as I could, and set my fingers on the keys.

“P-please! Please tell me!”

“I will, Cass, I will. Just follow me, all right? It’s all right...”

_Holy hell... this is it!_

I push a hand through my hair again, take a deep breath, and get to work.

Lotus and Seven don’t seem to know what to make of this, but at least they’re keeping quiet.

Or rather, Duo and Quatre are keeping them quiet. I think...maybe they understand.

I do.

_Cass..._

_Can you hear me?_

_Wherever you are... I finally understand._

_I understand **everything.**_

_And..._

_I understand, completely._

_Cass... it’s going to be fine._

_I’ve got it now._

“Getting it so far?”

“Yes?! Yes!”

My fingers shook less and less with every number that filled the screen. Whatever this was, I knew it was working.

“It’s not that complicated, really...in principle.”

Balthazar talked to me calmly. I wiped my tears on my sleeves and kept typing.

“All of the smaller grids need the numbers 1 - 9 in them, once, but you _can’t_ have the same number twice in any row or column of the larger grid. It’s called ‘sudoku’.”

I nodded, over and over. Everything I saw through his eyes, I put on the screen. As the last few digits fell into place, I could almost do it myself.

“It’s-- it’s done?!”

“It’s done!”

“Can I hit Enter?!”

“Of course!”

I hit the key so hard it hurt.

 

_“Emergency shutdown command has been acknowledged.”_

 

_“Incineration system has been shut down.”_

 

“Balthazar!!”

I jumped! I shouted at the top of my lungs!

“It _WORKED!”_

“Ha!”

_We did it, Cass!_

I wasn’t crying anymore, but I was shaking so hard I couldn’t stand.

I fell onto the floor, clutching my bookmark in both hands, and I laughed.

I just can’t help but laugh.

“You did it...” Lotus speaks up quietly, sounding stunned but unsure if she should disturb me.

Suddenly...

...the room shook, hard.

The rumbling quickens, and there’s a rush of water from somewhere far away.

“Earthquake!!”

“No, Cassie, that’s our time limit! You need to run!”

“Oh! _Oh!!”_

I leapt off the floor and ran to the RED, slamming my hand on the panel.

“We need to verify, hurry!”

I bolt for the machine.

“Who?!”

“What combination?!”

“All of us, _now!”_

They have no idea, but thank God, they do it anyway! I yank the lever-

The door slid open, and I flew into Hannah’s arms.

_“CASS!”_

She hugged me so tight it hurt, and I did the same. The detective was amazed, even laughed, and patted my head gently like he couldn’t believe I was real. Ariel jumped up and down for joy, cheering us on.

“Oh my God, Cassie...” Hannah sobbed into my hair. I could hear the smile on her face, and her heartbeat against my ear.

It sounded like home.

“There’s the DEAD, it’s right here!”

We verify again, and burst through the metal double door

taking the narrow stairs at top speed.

“How the _hell_ did that work?!” I hear Lotus call from behind me. “Our digital root is still 8!”

“Lotus, I’m surprised!” I’m already winded. “You’re the one who taught me about number bases!”

“Number bases?! This is about number bases?!”

“Sure it is!” I pause to gulp down air. “a=10, b=11-- what happens if you just keep going?”

“Keep going?”

“How far?” calls Seven.

“Oh come _on!”_

We whip past every deck of the central staircase, up and up and up and up, no doubt heading all the way to the top. I can hear the others murmuring, counting out loud under their breath.

“N-no...” Lotus gets it first, of course.

“No way!”

“Holy--”

I grin.

_“Yes--”_

q = 26

2 + 4 + 5 + 7 + 8 = 26

2 + 6 = 8

“There it is!”

I pull up in front of the door.

The _final_ door.

I spin the handle, and throw it open.

“It’s over...”

Hannah sighed, leaning her cheek against my head.

From the lifeboat, we watched the sun rise as the _Gigantic_ sank beneath the sea. Hannah and I leaned against each other as Seven rowed us all away.

“It’s finally over...”

I smiled and held her back, breathing in the fresh air. I said nothing.

I was so happy here, even though...I knew.

I knew it wasn’t really over, not yet.

It was just beginning.

“Uh...hey?”

The sunlight’s frankly blinding, except for Duo, who calls out to us as she sniffs the air and wrinkles her nose.

“I don’t _smell_ ocean.”

I laugh softly.

“Yeah, there’s a reason for that.”


	8. Epilogue

[ ♫ ](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByB--9sGDj4CQzBKLVMzeTQyTzg)

“You _could_ drive faster, you know.”

“On what _road?”_

“It’s an SUV! Hit the 4x4 and step on it!”

“You’re asking me to break the speed limit?”

“What _speed limit?_ Why are you signalling?!”

“I’m turning.”

Everyone laughs.

                       

We’re flying through the desert, courtesy of an SUV that was waiting outside Building Q.

Quatre, Duo, and myself occupy the back, while “the adults” sit up front. Lotus is directing Seven vaguely towards civilization via GPS, while the sisters interrogate him on his refusal to do more than 45mph with no one around to write him up.

“Listen-” Seven glances at them in the rearview. “Why don’t you kids play a game instead of nagging me for five minutes?”

“Like _what?”_

“I Spy?”

“There’d be nothing to ‘spy’ even if I weren’t blind.”

“Twenty Questions?”

“I have a hundred.”

They laugh again, looking over at me, although they don’t ask.

True, I know more than any of them. I just _do_. My connection to Cass disappeared for good outside the ship, but even so...I know.

Of course, they already know plenty themselves. For one, we really hadn’t been out at sea, after all. A little obvious, maybe, with some thought. The _Gigantic did_ sink nine years ago.

The bombs were a lie, too.

                       

Our bracelets had fallen off on the deck, just as promised. Lotus had snatched hers back up, cracking the back open to have a look inside.

“Unbelievable,” she’d muttered, holding up a miniscule microchip. “Pretty sure I have one of these in my bank card. This wouldn’t detonate a firecracker.”

Lotus...

She was the last of us to realize why she was here, and was clearly still processing it, quieter up in the front than us rowdy children.

She finally knows, _really_ knows, what happened to her daughters in the days they had been missing. There would finally be justice for them.

“Actually I _do_ have a question,” Duo leans forward toward Seven.

“If it’s about my driving...”

“No, it’s about the ‘All-ice’ coffin,” she insists. “What was up with you two back there?”

Seven laughs. Even I can’t help a smile as he relates the story one more time.

“But she _wasn’t_ there,” Quatre sighs. “Is the story actually true?”

“You think I lied because we didn’t _happen_ to find a 115-year-old mummy?” Seven chuckles. “I’d say that’s a question for Michael, not me. It was _his_ ship before the game. Ask him.”

“Yeah, ask him!” Duo chimes in. “I want to know, too.”

Quatre groans. “If I _must.”_

We unbuckle our seatbelts and turn around, standing on our knees to see into the trunk.

Not at all carefully, I pull the tape off Michael’s mouth.

“What happened to All-ice, Michael?”

“‘All-ice’ isn’t _real,"_ Michael glares up at me, practically rolling his eyes. “There _was_ a coffin in the study when I acquired the ship, but the only thing inside was the root of a peculiar plant.”

                              

“I had it identified as a member of the genus Mandragora. I was able to extract a potent alkaloid from it, which eventually became Soporil. It was a tremendous boon to my firm, which is ho-”

_"Faaa_ scinating.”

I slap the tape back on and take my seat, leaning against the window. My head still feels...a little strange. Not just tired, but a little fuzzy.

I don’t know where Cass and Hannah have gone, funnily enough. I’ll have to find them on my own.

I know he’s waiting for me.

I smile, and reach into my jacket to pull it out

                       

the clover bookmark. My gift. The one I’d gotten from Hannah, the one I’d

 

Balthazar smiled at me.

It usually made me laugh, with so many of his baby teeth missing, but I just...couldn’t.

It was June of 2018, the end of sixth grade. We were sitting on the hill behind his house, watching the sunset. School would be out soon, and then Hannah and I, we’d have to...

“I’m sorry my parents can’t adopt you,” Balthazar touched my shoulder. “I _asked,_ but-- well, they said if it goes _really_ bad, you can call, but, um... until then, they said we have to let ‘the system’ work. ...I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I hugged my knees, and tried to smile back. “I, I know...”

“‘s not fair,” Balthazar muttered, wrinkling his nose. “We’ve a big old house an’ all.”

He turned away, looking out over the grass. Balthazar never wanted to look upset in front of me.

But suddenly-- he dove, grabbing at something in the grass.

_“Woah..."_

“What-?” I leaned over, trying to see, but his hands were shut tight.

“Woah woah _woah,"_ a grin spread across his face as he slowly sat back up.

“What? What is it?!”

_“Looooook..."_ he held out his hands and opened them.

Cradled in his palms was a _perfect_ four-leaf clover.

“Ohhh...”

I sighed, amazed. I’d only ever _heard_ of real four-leaf clovers. I didn’t know anybody who’d even seen one!

And now, Balthazar held it out to me.

I stared at him, my face going red. I knew what he meant, but I could hardly believe it.

He took my hand, and laid the clover in my palm.

“If you press it,” he said, “like in a, in a book or what, it’ll last longer!”

“Are you sure?” I bit my lip, looking up at him.

“Yeah!” he nodded. “My uncle does it with flowers.”

I shook my head.

“I mean, are you _sure_ I can have it? It’s so special...”

“Of course!”

I looked down at it again. My eyes felt wet. I was so happy...and so sad. I didn’t want to leave, I couldn’t _stand_ it--

“Hey, Cass, did you know?” Balthazar asked me, grinning. “Every leaf means something?”

I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and looked up.

“What do they mean?”

Balthazar grinned wider. He touched each leaf, one at a time, as he spoke.

“I’ll. Never. Forget. You.” He looked back up at me. “That’s what they mean.”

“Thank you…” I whispered. I felt like I might cry again, but...happily. “Th-thank you so much. I’ll never forget you either, ever!”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this fic and would like to share it, please reblog [**this tumblr post,**](https://everymeloveseveryyou.tumblr.com/post/175185029629/9-strangers-awaken-aboard-a-ship-out-to-sea-9) which includes my promotional cover art, or check out my [**Meet the Players**](https://everymeloveseveryyou.tumblr.com/tagged/u:%20999:%20meet%20the%20players) series for individual characters. WIPs and any other future bonus materials can also be found [**on my blog.**](https://everymeloveseveryyou.tumblr.com/tagged/u:%20999)
> 
> A major **THANK YOU** to Squish Gaming on YouTube for their [gameplay videos](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?reload=9&list=PLOjlX2JnE0k6gdc7xE7CooVSR-f8VSwMG), NorseFTX on GameFAQs for their [complete game script](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ds/961351-nine-hours-nine-persons-nine-doors/faqs/61629), and all the contributors to the [Zero Escape Wiki](https://zeroescape.wikia.com/).
> 
> Thank you for reading! **Any feedback is hugely appreciated!**


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